Hydrogen from modified blood protein and light

Scientists have combined two molecules that occur naturally in blood to engineer a molecular complex that uses solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, says research published today in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Gene tically engineered blood protein can be used to split water into oxygen and hydrogen

This is just too cool.

I wonder how resilient these modified molecules are to thinks like contaminants in the solution or preservatives to prevent bacterial break down. If the shelf life and working life are reasonably long then this could be commercially viable.

In any case a door has been opened and other ways to do the same thing are going to be investigated.

I just love this kind of progress.

Yes this is a cool finding indeed. The factors that will be importand is the volume that this can produce and also how much light would be needed.
Something else, since it is useing molicule in blood, that also tends to mean that a persons blood could wind up being worth more then the person would be on the black market?

This is a VERY important dicovery! It makes bringing oxygen out from ice on distant planets a trivial thing, since it is virtually free of cost.

Amazing!

algae bioreactors are only about 0.1% efficient, so I'd like to see what kind of yields these guys get. Will check paper at work if i can: (Citation details here)

Very exciting!

[edit on 3-12-2006 by glastonaut]

Photosynthesis for hydrogen extraction, I like it.

If we can get it running efficiently enough, we can kiss goodbye to the 'dirty' conversion methods we currently have. But even the current hydrogen conversion methods are ALOT cleaner than oil refining.

Plus, you won't have to use any earth-born energy to perform the conversion, only sunlight, which is to be an unlimited resource for billions of years to come, so thats not an issue.

It certainly is time we put sunlight to more use.