Renewable Natural Resources: Sustainable methods of hydrogen production
In their project, the Renewable Natural Resources group compared and evaluated sustainable methods of producing hydrogen.
I-Ching Tseng presenting Renewable Natural Resources group’s project at the Museum of Technology. Photo: Veli-Matti Vesterinen.
“As hydrogen is currently produced from fossil fuels, it is important to provide clean and applicable alternatives,” the Renewable Natural Resources group wrote in their project report. In their project Kathryn Carr, Jarkko Etula, Chanikarn Khanutwong, and I-Ching Tseng studied the advantages and disadvantages of sustainable hydrogen production.
The group also presented three different ways of hydrogen production: electrolysis, fermentation, and biological water splitting.
“Electrolysis is the production of hydrogen and oxygen by splitting water using an electrical current passing through two electrodes. It is essentially the conversion of electrical energy to chemical energy in the form of hydrogen, with oxygen as a useful by-product. As the cost of natural gas increases, renewable energy will become economically competitive at central production facilities as well as at distributed generation points especially if carbon dioxide and other pollutants are included in the analysis.”
“Using biological water splitting has many advantages. Unlike electrolysis, no electric current is needed. Waste water can be used along with sunlight to make the algae grow. There is no need to use fertile farmland so there is no competition for food crops and further destruction of rainforest. Using biological water splitting is also very simple, as long as the algae and cyanobacteria is kept under the specific conditions unlike fermentation which involves many steps.”
“The photosynthetic bacterium was found to convert acetate and butyrate, the main metabolic products from dark-H2 fermentation, into hydrogen with high conversion efficiency. Therefore, phototrophic H2 production could be connected with dark-H2 fermentation to achieve a higher overall H2 yield and to reduce chemical oxygen demand (COD) of effluent from dark fermentation.”
Download Renewable Natural Resources group’s poster (pdf).
Elisa Lautala works as web editor for University of Helsinki's Faculty of Science. Elisa likes all kinds of cultural events, good books, warm weather, and aqua-jogging.