Guangzhou China April 8, 2011 - In early March 2011, State Key Laboratory of Urban Resource and Environment, affiliated to Harbin Institute of Technology, releases their academic achievement of hydrogen production at 4 degrees. This achievement has broken the routine that hydrogen production through microbial processes can not be fulfilled at 4 Celsius degree, which offersa new option for hydrogen production in severe cold regions.
The key to the success of this project lies in the low-temperature resistant microbial strain. "Ordinary hydrogen-producing microbes grow best at 25~30 degrees but it can not survive at 4 Celsius degree, letting alone producing hydrogen. On the contrary, the microbial strain adopted by our lab can grow and produce hydrogen at 4 Celsius degree. Also, our low-temperature hydrogen-producing technology is world-leading by now." Professor Xing explained, the research project leader.
According to the lab's test results, with the new production technology, each reactor with volume of 1 m3 can produce 0.23 m3 hydrogen at 4degrees each day. At present, the lab is still focusing on the researches on purification of the strain, and the technology is still under the lab stage.
Although the low-temperature hydrogen-producing technology is still under the lab stage, the Microbial Electrolysis Cell(MEC)technology (thebasisof the low-temperature hydrogen-producing technology) is relatively mature by now. Even so, the MEC technology is still unable to be commercialized due to high costs from the metal catalyst which is indispensable in this technology. According to Professor Xing, if the costs from substrates are taken away, the hydrogen-producing costs with their MEC technology at regular temperature (25~30 Celsius degrees ) reach about USD0.18/m3, and it is still higher than their goal of USD0.15/m3, which can compete the costs with conventional fossil method. He predicted that the MEC technology could only be conducted to produce hydrogen on small scales or to serve in sewage-treatment processes in the future, due to its high costs.
"In fact, like MEC technology, traditional fermentation method also has the problem of high production cost, which leads to its commercialization only on small scales in the world." Professor Xing added. Compared with the conventional fossil-based hydrogen, biological hydrogen either from fermentation or MEC technology still has lower competitiveness due to their high production costs.
According to Professor Xing, the MEC technology has been developed by their lab for nearly five years. By now, only their lab mastered this technology in China and their MEC technology can rank at least within top three in the world. He disclosed Penn State University in the U.S. also mastered the same MEC technology as theirs, but they can not conduct the MEC technology under low temperature.
Source: CCM International