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The group announced three advances from their "one pot" process:
1) a novel combination of enzymes,
2) an increased hydrogen generation rate - to as fast as natural hydrogen fermentation, and
3) a chemical energy output greater than the chemical energy stored in sugars – the highest hydrogen yield reported from cellulosic
materials.
"In addition to converting the chemical energy from
the sugar, the process also converts the low-temperature thermal
energy into high-quality hydrogen energy – like Prometheus stealing
fire," said Percival Zhang, assistant professor of biological systems
engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at
Virginia Tech. "It is exciting because using cellulose instead of starch expands the renewable resource for producing hydrogen to include biomass," said Jonathan Mielenz, leader of the Bioconversion Science and Technology Group at ORNL. The researchers used cellulosic materials isolated from wood chips, but crop waste or switchgrass could also be used. "If a small fraction – 2 or 3 percent – of yearly biomass production were used for sugar-to-hydrogen fuel cells for transportation, we could reach transportation fuel independence," Zhang said. (He added that the 3 percent figure is for global transportation needs. The U.S. would actually need to convert about 10 percent of biomass – which would be 1.3 billion tons of usable biomass). The research is supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research; Zhang's DuPont Young Professor Award, and the U.S. Department of Energy.
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