Skimming through Green Car Congress, I came upon an article about NanoLogix, a company that purports to generate hydrogen gas from clostridia bactera.
Now, the microbiologists / biofuels enthusiasts out there might recognize that clostridia are a class of bacteria that include Clostridium acetobutylicum, a commercially valuable species used for producing butanol, as well as acetone and ethanol from starch.
I wonder which bacterium NanoLogix is using for the production of hydrogen gas and whether their operation might be similar to the process that uses Clostridium tyrobutyricum to produce butyric acid and hydrogen in making butanol?
The GCC article notes that:
In a natural fermentative process, some of the hydrogen output from hydrogen-producing bacteria (Clostridia) would be used (inter-species transfer) by methane-producing bacteria (methanogens) in the inoculum. This results in lowered usable hydrogen output.
NanoLogix devised a heat-based process to reduce or eliminating the methanogens, thereby increasing the yield of hydrogen. NanoLogix bacteria now metabolize sugars and convert them into carbon dioxide and hydrogen at a 1:1 ratio. The carbon dioxide is then removed by passing the gas mixture through a concentrated solution of sodium hydroxide, leaving behind pure hydrogen.
Even though it sounds like NanoLogix is more interested in producing hydrogen, their fermentation process sounds like it could be utilized or piggy-backed to produce butanol as well. A commercially viable system of producing both hydrogen gas and butanol from bacteria and biomass would massacre any ethanol system on the market.
You could use the butanol produced as a complete replacement (or additive) for gasoline, while using the hydrogen to charge fuel cells for high-integrity energy storage. The potential also exists for producing biodiesel from the vegetable oil pressed out of crops (algae anyone?) and then fermenting the pressed biomass into hydrogen/butanol — essentially a single feedstock bioreactor.
Imagine being able to efficiently produce your own biodiesel, butanol and hydrogen from a litany of biomass feedstocks — goodbye petroleum dependence! Hello farm livin’ 2.0!
- Curtiss Martin
