Algae returns as fuel for our future
Researchers at Tel Aviv University have revealed how microalgae produce hydrogen, a clean fuel of the future, and suggest a possible mechanism to jumpstart mass production of this environmentally-friendly energy source. Their results have been published in back-to-back studies in Plant Physiology and Biotechnology for Biofuels.
The research was led by Dr. Iftach Yacoby, head of TAU’s renewable energy laboratory, and Rinat Semyatich, Haviva Eisenberg, Iddo Weiner and Oded Liran, his students at the School of Plant Sciences and Food Securityat TAU’s Faculty of Life Sciences.
Researchers in the past believed that algae only produce hydrogen in the course of a single microburst at dawn lasting just a few minutes. But Dr. Yacoby and his team used highly sensitive technology to discover that algaeproduce hydrogen from photosynthesis all day long. Armed with this discovery, the team harnessed genetic engineering to increase algae‘s production of this clean energy source 400 percent.
Read the full article by Karin Kloosterman via Green Prophet.
[Photo by oliver.dodd | Flickr]
