MIT Researchers Harness Viruses To Split Water 347
ByronScott writes "A team of researchers at MIT has just announced that they have successfully modified a virus to split apart molecules of water, paving the way for an efficient and non-energy-intensive method of producing hydrogen fuel. 'The team, led by Angela Belcher, the Germeshausen Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Biological Engineering, engineered a common, harmless bacterial virus called M13 so that it would 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. Over time, however, the virus-wires would clump together and lose their effectiveness, so the researchers added an extra step: encapsulating them in a microgel matrix, so they maintained their uniform arrangement and kept their stability and efficiency.'"
Re:Hopefully they aren't too effective.. (Score:3, Informative)
Viruses can't multiply by themselves, they have no DNA. They'd have to infect something first and convince it to do the work. Since there probably won't be any fish left in the sea soon [bbc.co.uk], it isn't going to happen.
Re:What could possibly go wrong? (Score:3, Informative)
If the net effect is a positive for the virus, the behavior would have evolved on it's own in nature. If it's a negative, the virus will be out competed by other viruses. Even if it's neutral, it will at most fulfill its current niche and the water splitting abilities will be lost to genetic drift since it doesn't convey any advantage. In other words: Nothing is going to go wrong, control your irrational fears of genetic engineering and biotechnology.
No, they harness catalysts to split water (Score:5, Informative)
The actual splitting of water is done by using a pigment to absorb sunlight, then transferring the energy to indium oxide as a catalyst to split water. That's old news. Good, but old.
The problem is that it's hard to keep them doing this efficiently; things tend to clump up. They came up with a way to use viruses to make a structure that keeps everything separate. Viruses are good for building self-assembling structures; this is also old news in nanotech.
Putting it all together here, that's news, but not terribly exciting news, since it's all still in a lab and not scaled to industrial sizes. So the PR department buffs it up with a misleading headline about viruses splitting water.
So no, you don't have to worry about the virus eating the world. It's all about indium oxide, which is not self-replicating. The viruses are just a piece of the machinery.
It is really a sunlight + water - hydrogen device (Score:5, Informative)
Before anyone more think this will split water molecules magically. It also requires a catalyst, so it will not spread by itself in the ocean.
Missing totally from the article, is any hard numbers about efficiency. Is it converting solar energy at 1%, 10%, 20% ? How is compared to PV-cells? If it is anywhere near, it could be very neat to get your solar energy as hydrogen instead of electricity. Hydrogen can be stored and converted to electricity when you need it.
Re:There has got to be a missing step (Score:5, Informative)
They're using the virus to bring together the components and then using sunlight to power the split and the biological components. It's like photosynthsis with H20 instead of CO2. Kind of novel, but who knows if it'll work on an industrial scale. It's just a lab experiment for now.
This is solar energy (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What could ... (Score:5, Informative)
Impossible. You need energy input to split water. No amount of catalysts can help you - first law of thermodynamics comes to rescue, as usual.
Re:Hopefully they aren't too effective.. (Score:3, Informative)
What? Of course viruses have DNA (or RNA) otherwise there would be nothing to replicate...
Of course, there is also the mimivirus, with 1,000 genes that produces its own virion factory in the cell, so that it doesn't even have to put its genes into the cell nucleus.
Re:What could ... (Score:5, Informative)
Now the second law comes to the rescue - you need temperature gradients to extract energy.
Re:What could possibly go wrong? (Score:0, Informative)
This statement seems to imply that all possible positive characteristics for a virus have already evolved. That's is quite a statement, much like someone saying that all possible inventions have already been invented. To me it seems quite absurd. In any case, what's good for a virus, may not be necessarily good for other living things, such as humans.
Oh, I see, you're just trolling. Carry on.
Re:Hopefully they aren't too effective.. (Score:3, Informative)
And here's the wrap-up... (Score:2, Informative)
“Unlikely”? That’s quite an understatement.
For personal reasons I highly suspect that natural photosynthesis is pretty damn efficient, and I doubt that they’ll ever get anything similar that is 10 times more efficient than natural photosynthesis. Okay, if you scale it up 10 times larger then you can get 10 times the yield, but 10 times more efficient on the same scale? I don’t think they’ll ever achieve that. But... who knows? Maybe there’s a good reason for natural photosynthesis not to be the most efficient method possible.
Anyway, yes, this could be a key piece of the overall puzzle of getting cheaper, more efficient utilization of solar energy.
Re:No, they harness catalysts to split water (Score:5, Informative)
Minor correction: they're using iridium oxide. That alone make it hard to scale up: iridium (virtually tied with osmium) is the densest material possible on earth that we know about, has an incredibly high melting point (900 *C higher than iron, though less than tungsten), and rare enough and hard enough to process to make it relatively expensive. They're using it in the lab because its a very good catalyst (see the rest of the platinum group).
But fortunately, almost all major advances start out this way: a small process that wouldn't work in real life, but which is later developed with other materials or techniques to scale up production. Unfortunately, many more end up as vaporware. Either way, even small advances like this are exciting.
Re:Hopefully they aren't too effective.. (Score:3, Informative)
A hydrogen and oxygen mix at room temperature won't burn -- you need a spark. It's easy to make the mix: put two electrodes (carbon?) in water with an inverted, water-filled tube above them. You can use two inverted tubes to collect the gases if you prefer.
(Any mistakes are my own. I'm remembering this from school. I'm sure I did the acid+metal = hydrogen + alkali experiment when I was 10 or 11, and the electrolysis of water a year later. In both cases we had to do the "standard test for hydrogen" -- it burns in a test tube with a "squeaky pop". If you add oxygen the pop gets louder. If you have a 1m-long, 30cm-wide "test tube" full of hydrogen you still get a squeaky pop, but maybe in that case mixing oxygen in isn't a good idea.)
Re:What could possibly go wrong? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hopefully they aren't too effective.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It is really a sunlight + water - hydrogen devi (Score:2, Informative)
This is in fact, precisely one of the bigger challenges with Hydrogen as an energy storage/delivery medium. It's not so easy to store it, or pipe it over long distances. Its molecules are so tiny that they diffuse through almost anything, leaking out and embrittling the tank or pipe in the process.