Advances and challenges in photosynthetic hydrogen production

The vision to replace coal with hydrogen goes back to Jules Verne in 1874. However, sustainable hydrogen production remains challenging. The most elegant approach is to utilize photosynthesis for water splitting and to subsequently save solar energy as hydrogen. Cyanobacteria and green algae are unicellular photosynthetic organisms that contain hydrogenases and thereby possess the enzymatic equipment for photosynthetic hydrogen production. These features of cyanobacteria and algae have inspired artificial and semi-artificial in vitro techniques, that connect photoexcited materials or enzymes with hydrogenases or mimics of these for hydrogen production. These in vitro methods have on their part been models for the fusion of cyanobacterial and algal hydrogenases to photosynthetic photosystem I (PSI) in vivo, which recently succeeded as proofs of principle.

Automated summary

The idea of replacing coal with hydrogen dates back to 1874, and sustainable hydrogen production has always been a challenge. Utilizing photosynthesis to split water and store solar energy as hydrogen is an elegant approach. Cyanobacteria and green algae, unicellular photosynthetic organisms that possess hydrogenases, have inspired artificial and semi-artificial in vitro techniques for hydrogen production. These in vitro methods have also served as models for fusing cyanobacterial and algal hydrogenases with photosynthetic photosystem I (PSI) in vivo, which has recently been successfully demonstrated.