Hydrogen from bacteria?

Factual Questions
1

I saw a brief blurb today about a discovery that could create hydrogen from bacteria and any organic matter (trees, grass clipping, anything) and energy. The guy in the blurb said you could get 3 times the energy out as they put in (to stimulate the bacteria with electricity I presume)…which sounded fishy to me right there.

Has anyone heard about this? Any details? I’m stuck at work for the next 3-4 days but am interested if anyone has any details about it and wants to take a shot at what, if anything, this will mean to the possibility of using hydrogen more extensively in the future. Of course the guy in the blurb (it’s on LiveScience somewhere if anyone wants to go look) was implying this could be a great break through…but there were no details or anything (of course).

Anyway, would appreciate it if any 'dopers know the scoop on this.

-XT

2

Wired article.

I don’t see any truly outrageous claims, and it’s research done at a university not some nut in his garden shed.

If it can be scaled up, I imagine it would be quite useful.

I’m curious about though is the energy required to produce the acetic acid from waste which is what the bacteria break down to produce hydrogen.

3

Well, I admit I’m not a chemist and don’t eactly understand the way it works, but I don’t believe the idea is that they’re “getting energy out of it” but rather than they’re getting usable energy out of it. All our energy-production methods involve some form of energy input, of course. The bacteria need a certain amount of juice (in a specific form) to get a certain output we find useful. Of course, this is really just increasing the entropy in the universe, but whaddayagonnado?

4

Seems to me it would be more practical in the short run to just have thebacteria produce gasoline. Hydrogen fuel requires solving a multitude of problems before it can significantly replace fossil fuel in the world economy, from distribution, vehicle storage and engines/fuel cells to utilize it. Biogasoline avoids these hurdles by using existing refining, distribution infrastructure and vehicles, while eliminating the fossil carbon impact on the atmosphere. Best of both worlds, IMHO.

5

Presumably they’re talking about the energy required to process the stuff - ‘stuff’ that already contains energy stored from sunlight as chemicals made by the plant as it grew. Nothing fishy about that. No more fishy than saying we get more energy from fossil fuels than it requires to extract them from the ground.