Today I have been mostly running gels.
I do a lot of this; it is one of the most useful tools in the molecular/cell biologist's garage. It is used primarily as an identification method (on the basis of relative molecular mass, or more colloquially, size) for DNA and proteins, but often also for purification.
The problem with hydrogen as an 'alternative' fuel is not just storing or transporting the stuff, but that to make it in the first place you have to expend energy. This energy would have to come from fossil fuels or nuclear or solar or wind or whatever. It is probably a lot more efficient to convert those forms of energy into electricity and use that directly, than to use heat or electricity (electrolysis) from those sources to to make hydrogen.
The smarter reader is already ahead of me.
Because you see, when you run a gel you produce hydrogen at the cathode:
2H+ + 2e- -> H2
This gaseous hydrogen, if you run your gel hot enough, just bubbles up out of the rig and into the air. We are using the electricity anyway to perform a useful task, so why not also capture the hydrogen and use it? The amount generated by a single gel, or even a single lab, is not much, but scale up across the state, the country, the world. . . and you have a vast amount of clean fuel, just going to waste.
Comments
Does Hydrogen require a special container?
Posted by: PS | November 11, 2006 09:50 PM
Unfortunately I fear that in most labs, collecting hydrogen would just result in grad students setting fire to the stuff for fun.
Good idea tho'.
Posted by: He Who Whiffles A Lot | November 15, 2006 04:09 AM