Tel Aviv U study finds way to jumpstart hydrogen production from algae

Microalgae may be able to replace fossil fuels in the future, thanks to Tel Aviv University’s researchers who discovered how to produce hydrogen from this kind of microscopic algae.

The results, published at the beginning of October, suggest a possible mechanism to use these microalgae to jumpstart mass production of hydrogen, considered one of the cleanest fuels of the future.

The research was conducted by the School of Plant Sciences and Food Security at the TAU’s Faculty of Life Science and led by Dr. Iftach Yacoby. The scientific journals Plant Physiology and Biotechnology for Biofuels recently published the TAU study.

In the past, researchers were convinced that algae only produce hydrogen for just a few minutes at dawn. Such a short amount of time made it impossible to produce quantities of hydrogen. But using highly sensitive technology, the TAU researchers were able to discover that microalgae produce hydrogen all day long.

Laboratory tests revealed that algae produce hydrogen thanks to the enzyme hydrogenase, which breaks down when oxygen is present. However, if the oxygen is removed, hydrogenase doesn’t break down, and the algae keep on producing hydrogen. Once the researchers figured out how to eliminate the oxygen, they were able to achieve their goal.

Based on this discovery, Yacoby and his team harnessed genetic engineering to increase the algae’s hydrogen production by 400 percent.

According to the researchers, the discovery reveals that hydrogen could one day become a reliable way to supply to world’s energy needs and its production from algae is more promising than had been thought.

Yacoby and his team have now set themselves a goal of discovering synthetic enzymes capable of increasing hydrogen production in microalgae, so that it will become possible to start industrial production.