NGen Virus to split water... by MiT
MGMT
All along the eastern shore
Put your circuits in the sea
This is what the world is for
Making electricity
You can feel it in your mind
Oh you can do it all the time
Plug it in and change the world
You are my electric girl. MGMT
Fuel for Cars, Energy for Homes,
With the advent of nano-extraction techniques, the extraction of
hydrogen from sea water for the use of power generation and fueling
of cars is a step closer. NGEN's proposed conversion of coal and gas
fired power stations to hydrogen and the supply of hydrogen for cars
will revolutionise the worlds energy sector.
MITs Belcher uses engineered virus to split water
By Christine Peterson, on April 16th, 2010
Angela Belcher and team at MIT have tweaked a bacterial virus to serve as a scaffolding to:
attract and bind with molecules of a catalyst (the team used iridium oxide) and a biological pigment (zinc porphyrins). The viruses became wire-like devices that could very efficiently split the oxygen from water molecules.
Belcher says that
within two years she expects to have a prototype device that can carry out the whole process of splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen, using a self-sustaining and durable system.
This is just a very early taste of what we can expect someday from more extensively designed molecular machine systems.
Chris Peterson