Thanks to a bacterium, it has been seen that it is possible to extract electricity from the air, literally

March 31, 2023 11:50

By looking at how bacteria filter the air to take in the hydrogen that makes them live, a team of Australian scientists has managed to mimic the process of an enzyme called Huc, which produces a constant current of electricity through the air around it.

Those responsible for the investigation are Dr. Rhys Grinter, who leads a team made up of PhD student Ashleigh Body and the teacher Chris Greening of the Institute for Biomedical Discovery at Monash University in Melbourne (Australia), has discovered an enzyme that converts air into energy.

This discovery, published in the prestigious Nature magazine, is possible thanks to the use of low amounts of hydrogen in the atmosphere, which allows the creation of an electric current. “We have known for some time that bacteria can use trace amounts of hydrogen in the air as an energy source to grow and survive, including in Antarctic soils, volcanic craters and the deep ocean,” Greening explains, “but we didn’t know how they did it until now. “.

The research team showed that this enzyme, called Huc, converts hydrogen gas into an electrical current. Unlike all other known chemical catalysts and enzymes, “Huc is extraordinarily efficient. It even consumes hydrogen below atmospheric levels, as little as 0.00005% of the air we breathe.”

In the study, the researchers used several state-of-the-art methods to reveal the molecular blueprint for the atmospheric oxidation of hydrogen. They used advanced microscopy (cryo-EM) to determine their atomic structure and electrical pathways, pushing the limits to produce the most resolved enzyme structure recorded by this method to date. They also used a technique called electrochemistry to show that the purified enzyme creates electricity at minute concentrations of hydrogen.

Culture of bacteria in the laboratory.

The Huc is a ‘natural battery’ that produces a sustained electrical current from air or added hydrogen. This discovery has considerable potential to develop small air-powered devices.as an alternative to those powered by solar energy.

Enzyme-producing bacteria like Huc are common and can be grown in large numbers, meaning we have access to a sustainable source of the enzyme. Grinter says a key goal for future work is to expand Huc’s production. “Once we produce Huc in sufficient quantities, the sky is literally the limit for its use in clean energy production,” she says.