Professor Thomas Wood has engineered a strain of the E. coli bacterium to produce a potentially large amount of hydrogen. By selectively deleting six specific genes, this new strain can produce 140 times more hydrogen than it normally would in its glucose conversion process. Wood thinks that the bacterium could be used to produce hydrogen “on-site” at a hydrogen filling station, eliminating the need to create a costly hydrogen transport and delivery system. We suppose that this means you would instead have to create a sugar delivery system to feed the bacteria. But that is probably simpler and cheaper.
As with almost all of these announcements, the technology is not ready for prime time. So don’t expect to see an “E. Coli hydrogen and production filling station” on your block any time soon.
