A new gene that can make electricity?

Trent Nguyen says he's sitting on one powerful gene.

The CEO of Genexinh says his company has discovered a gene that produces a protein that can split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. The electron can subsequently be stripped from the hydrogen molecules--in other words, it's a gene that can make electricity with very little energy and expense.

One of the big knocks against using hydrogen as a fuel source is the cost and energy required to produce it. Using a protein as a catalyst and water as a feedstock for hydrogen would be a lot cheaper, Nguyen said. The company wants to develop a fuel cell that can power small electrical devices. But if it fails, Nguyan would still make a great Batman villain: Give him $1 billion dollars or he'll vaporize the water supply of Gotham.

(Photo: U.S. Geological Survey)

[tyecies]

practical?

a protein that can cheaply produce hydrogen gas would be incredible. but is this practical? I've worked with proteins in labs, and milligrams of common lab proteins such as protein A cost hundreds of dollars. This is a great idea, but only if it can be cheaply and efficiently produced, and production is scalable.

[SilverBackGeek]

Electric DNA

I can just see it now... With a little gene manipulation, in 100 years or so all we'll have to do will be to plug one of the kids into the cigarette lighter and drive off into the sunset.

[edward.reid]

It is practical!

It seems no one has thought of state of the art progress, how things get cheaper as we learn how to produce and mass produce. So cost is Not a factor. And didn't people say nuclear energy was too costly. Hasn't the cost come down -- perhaps not enough yet, but give it a chance. And of course, years ago splitting the atom was unheard of. Come on get with it, if it can be done it, will be. And reasonably,too.

[Howard2nd]

Hydrogen + Oxygen + Electricity = Boom

Return on Investment - How much energy does it take to make the protein? How much protein per molecule to split? Is the net return from the fuel cell as it combines Hydrogen and Oxygen releasing energy greater than the sum of the proceeding? Can do is not a reason to actually try it.

[ronb42]

The first thing I thought of after reading....

the headline was the story about the car that runs on water. Even that will likely never happen, people have invented cars that run on different power sources such as compressed air.
The only thing I have seen recently is in the area of ethanol / E85. At least that is a reality and is currently being used even though it can be more costly than gasoline. more at http://e85.whipnet.net

[rainenr2]

Some basic Chemistry

This protein will not generate electricity itself but may be useful in splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen - a process that requires input of energy no matter what type of catalyst is used. The concept of water + a catalyst with no other energy input generating electricity runs against all the known chemistry - and there is a hell of a lot known about splitting water.

It is well known that there are natural processes that split water into hydrogen and oxygen using proteins. The mechanism of photosynthesis includes a step that strips hydrogen from water using the energy from sunlight.

Scientists have tried for years to develop this as a process to make solar generated hydrogen without much success.

[SilverBackGeek]

Hmmmmm....

Maybe this actually is the same gene that generates the photosynthesis protein in plants. That would make the potential energy source sunlight itself.

[cphod]

Perpetual motion

The problem is energetics. Like the Nigeria scam, someone is always re-inventing perpetual motion or outlawing the second law of thermodynamics. Black holes can claim to do this, but nobody has ever come back from a black hole to report experimental results. Twenty five years ago, Congress in its infinite wisdom, almost passed a law that would have granted a patent on a perpetual motion machine that had previously been rejected by the patent office.

There are some great professors? web sites in Russia, where electrolysis is considered a wonderful source of unlimited free energy: hydrolyse water for a penny, get back a dimes worth of energy, burn it and get back the same amount of water. Repeat. Bottom line, it takes a certain amount of energy to hydrolyse water (to make hydrogen and oxygen). Once you have it, you can burn it and get most (but not all) of that energy back. But there is no reaction you can run spontaneously in a glass of water that will continually generate energy you can burn.

Here is a thought experiment to help in visualizing the reality of this. Imagine a closed bell jar containing a pool of water with the magic protein (enzyme) in it. The enzyme is continuously producing hydrogen and oxygen from water, using equation (1):

(1) 2H2O -> 2H2 + O2.

You ignite the gas that is rising from the surface of the water in the closed jar, creating a small flame over the water. As it burns (2):

(2) 2 H2 + O2 -> 2H2O, + heat + entropy,

water vapor is deposited on the cool surface of the vessel, running down the sides, returning to the pool, where it is again hydrolysed, burned, etc., i.e., perpetual motion. The vessel continues to heat up spontaneously, generating energy from nowhere. Matter is conserved, energy is not. End of story ? almost, except I conveniently forgot the energy input in equation (1).

It is possible that an enzyme can hydrolyse water, but this requires an energy input, such as ATP (adenosine triphosphate) to drive the reaction, and this energy has to come from somewhere. So you could design recombinant (biotech) plants (for example) that would harvest the sun?s energy through photosynthesis, metabolize the organic matter that is synthesized in the process, making ATP (the cell?s energy currency), then burn the ATP in the enzyme reaction to drive water hydrolysis, producing hydrogen fuel.

Joke:
Oh, yeah, I conveniently forgot to mention that Exxon Mobil bought up the patent rights to free water hydrolysis, so now nobody has access to the technology. Damn! George W. Bush was reportedly behind the conspiracy, along with his co-conspirators who used electrolysis to melt the Twin Towers, starting with just one drop of water.

Investment opportunity:
Bottom line, Trent Nguyen, is recruiting investors. The US patent office lists no patents or patent applications for him or his company, so either he has no patents or they are not yet listed.

Here is a free, full-text patent resource that can be used for due diligence or curiosity: http://www.patentlens.net/patentlens/simple.cgi
See also: http://www.uspto.gov

Now comes the Q&A

Q: What were the two greatest scams of all history?

A: Y2K and dot.bomb, both of which took place in the year 2,000 AD.

The perfect scam is reportedly achieved when the scamor is regarded as a great savior (after the take), and the scamee is grateful for what happened.

In this sense, Y2K was perfect, as both results were achieved. The dot.bomb disaster did not achieve either result.

[Richie]

yada-yada-yada

This is more of the same thing I've heard over the years. First these people are against electric cars although our trains are diesel elecreic with power to spare, our subway system is electric with power to spare. That is the answer they are against in entergrating an electric vehicle into the American way. POWER from an Poluting gasoline engine is the thing you want an you shorted sited people people should get over it.

[silentbill]

Hydrogen + Oxygen can be reacted to produce water

When Hydrogen and Oxygen are combined to form water, a fairly large amount of energy is released.

Even using a protein to split off Hydrogen and Oxygen, that same energy that would have been released above, will have to be added plus a conversion loss in order to get Hydrogen and Oxygen back.

I hope the conversion can be done with solar energy and at high efficiency, and that the protein is inexpensive to make and is stable. Since a protein is involved, the water being used in the process might have to be free of bacteria that could break down the protein. The further you look, the more complex it becomes.

Miracle Sludge

Ideally: So we feed this thing crap and sunshine and we get pure oxygen and hydrogen.
Wow. You INSERT COMPANY HERE are "The Man In The White Suite"
Not that there is any pending danger, but just a little footnote: Did you know that billions of years ago a much, much larger percentage of the Earth's atmosphere was oxygen? Oxygen is actually poisonous to life as we know it now in those distant past concentrations. Is this a gene that can get out into the wild or can it only exist with a man-made co-gene perhaps fed or introduced to keep it in check in case? That was just some sci-fi thinking there for fun. So if it isn't Carbon Dioxide it's Oxygen. Please archive this for 10,000 years so I can say I told you so. Thank you. Otherwise allow me to pump and dump their stocks with this BS.

[scooke]

Energy Potential

This is not "perpetual motion". It is understood that the gene is expressed in an organism that requires a food source, and the energy input is sunlight (still basically unlimited).

However, the KEY point in considering investment is the point made about patent filings. With no protected and verified process disclosed, there is no evidence that this actually exists, much less will work. For the REAL future of a hydrogen economy with water sources, check out SHEC labs in Canada. They have working units, contracts, and major investors - it's almost too late to get in. P.S. - they don't use proteins.