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Title: Hydrogen production using hydrogenase-containing oxygenic photosynthetic organisms

Patent ·
OSTI ID:1175631

A reversible physiological process provides for the temporal separation of oxygen evolution and hydrogen production in a microorganism, which includes the steps of growing a culture of the microorganism in medium under illuminated conditions to accumulate an endogenous substrate, depleting from the medium a nutrient selected from the group consisting of sulfur, iron, and/or manganese, sealing the culture from atmospheric oxygen, incubating the culture in light whereby a rate of light-induced oxygen production is equal to or less than a rate of respiration, and collecting an evolved gas. The process is particularly useful to accomplish a sustained photobiological hydrogen gas production in cultures of microorganisms, such as Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.

Research Organization:
National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
DOE Contract Number:
AC36-99GO10337
Assignee:
Midwest Research Institute (Kansas City, MO)
Patent Number(s):
6,989,252
Application Number:
09/748,690
OSTI ID:
1175631
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (2)

Hydrogen biotechnology: Progress and prospects journal September 1996
Sustained Photobiological Hydrogen Gas Production upon Reversible Inactivation of Oxygen Evolution in the Green Alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii journal January 2000