Electrohydrogenesis or biocatalyzed electrolysis is the name given to a process for generating
hydrogen
Hydrogen is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol H and atomic number 1. It is the lightest and abundance of the chemical elements, most abundant chemical element in the universe, constituting about 75% of all baryon, normal matter ...
gas from organic matter being
decomposed by bacteria. This process uses a modified
fuel cell
A fuel cell is an electrochemical cell that converts the chemical energy of a fuel (often hydrogen fuel, hydrogen) and an oxidizing agent (often oxygen) into electricity through a pair of redox reactions. Fuel cells are different from most bat ...
to contain the organic matter and water. A small amount, 0.2–0.8
V of electricity is used, the original article reports an overall energy efficiency of 288% can be achieved (this is computed relative to the amount of electricity used,
waste heat
Waste heat is heat that is produced by a machine, or other process that uses energy, as a byproduct of doing work. All such processes give off some waste heat as a fundamental result of the laws of thermodynamics. Waste heat has lower utility ...
lowers the overall efficiency). This work was reported by Cheng and Logan.
See also
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Biohydrogen
Biohydrogen is hydrogen, H2 that is produced biologically. Interest is high in this technology because H2 is a clean fuel and can be readily produced from certain kinds of biomass, including biological waste. Furthermore some photosynthetic micro ...
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Electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide
The electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide, also known as CO2RR, is a process that converts carbon dioxide (CO2) to more reduced chemical species using electrical energy. CO2RR can produce diverse compounds including formate, carbon monoxid ...
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Electromethanogenesis Electromethanogenesis is a form of electrofuel production where methane is produced by direct biological conversion of electrical current and carbon dioxide.
Methane producing technologies garnered interest from the scientific community prior to 20 ...
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Fermentative hydrogen production Fermentative hydrogen production is the Fermentation (biochemistry), fermentative conversion of organic substrates to hydrogen, H2. Hydrogen produced in this manner is often called biohydrogen. The conversion is affected by bacteria and protozoa, ...
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Microbial fuel cell
Microbial fuel cell (MFC) is a type of bioelectrochemical fuel cell system also known as micro fuel cell that
generates electric current by diverting electrons produced from the microbial oxidation of reduced compounds (also known as fuel or ele ...
References
External links
Biocatalyzed electrolysis
Hydrogen production
Environmental engineering
Biotechnology
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