Japan scientist uses egg white for clean energy
A JAPANESE-led team has cracked open a method to improve the production of carbon-free energy – by using proteins taken from egg white.
Scientist Yusuke Yamada, a professor at Osaka City University, said his team had managed to use protein from egg white as a tool for producing hydrogen, a powerful source of clean electricity.
The new method “brings us closer to our ultimate goal of producing hydrogen from water”, Yamada said. “This lays the groundwork for the clean production of hydrogen.”
When it reacts with oxygen, hydrogen produces electricity, releasing only water and heat in the process.
But hydrogen is mass-produced using natural gas or fossil fuels, which themselves result in harmful emissions.
It could be produced in labs without fossil fuels and scientists had traditionally done this by creating a special interaction of the molecules in liquid, Yamada said.
But free-moving and randomly located molecules and particles in the fluid can interfere with the process of producing hydrogen and scientists have long searched for a way to immobilise them.
Yamada’s team used a protein found in egg to build crystals with lots of tiny holes to trap these particles.
The change brought a sense of traffic control to the molecular interactions and improved the efficiency of clean, hydrogen production, Yamada said.
“If you use hydrogen as an energy source, it only releases water in the environment. It is extremely environmentally friendly,” he said.
“We found protein was a useful tool to generate hydrogen in a lab without fossil fuel.”
Yamada’s method was published in this month’s edition of the scientific journal Applied Catalysis B. – AFP