Fuel from food waste: bacteria pro...(wo types of bacteria can produce much mo...)

Date:7/16/2008

wo types of bacteria can produce much more hydrogen than either could alone," said Dr Mark Redwood. "A significant challenge for the development of this process to a productive scale is to design a kind of photobioreactor that is cheap to construct and able to harvest light from a large area. A second issue is connecting the process with a reliable supply of sugary feedstock."

With a more advanced pre-treatment, biohydrogen can even be produced from the waste from food-crop cultivation, such as corn stalks and husks. Tens of millions of tonnes of this waste is produced every year in the UK. Diverting it from landfill into biohydrogen production addresses both climate change and energy security.

The University of Birmingham has teamed up with Modern Waste Ltd and EKB Technology Ltd to form Biowaste2energy Ltd, which will develop and commercialise this waste to energy technology.

"In a final twist, the hydrogenase enzymes in the leftover bacteria can be used to scavenge precious metals from spent automotive catalysts to help make fuel cell that converts hydrogen into electricity," said Professor Lynne Macaskie. "So nothing is wasted and an important new application can be found for today's waste mountain in tomorrow's non-fossil fuel transport and energy."

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Contact: Lucy Goodchild l.goodchild@sgm.ac.uk 44-011-898-81843 Society for General Microbiology Source:Eurekalert

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