Fish, Oxygen, and Hydrogen

[padren]

I am just a bit curious about the gills process in fish, they must do something like electrolysis to extract the O from the H2 in water, and I can only imagine that considering how long gilled creatures have existed and been evolving, that they must have some effeciency tricks that if applied, could make industrial H2 production easier, as least as it pertains to electrolysis.

 

I don't mean bio-systems for extracting hydrogen from water, but anything they do that gives them an edge could probably be built mechanically into a system.

 

 

Does anyone know if this has been looked into and, if fish are actually less effecient than our own current mechanical methods or are they better?

 

 

I am also a bit curious about algae and such, anything that "breathes" in water needs to break down the O from the H2, and algae can be wonderfully self automated.

[ecoli]

no, fish make use of the O2 gas dissolved in seawater, they don't break apart water... they don't nerely have enough energy to do that, I bet not even if they completely combusted themselves. The capillaries in the gills work similiarly to the capilaries in alveoli, by using a counter-current exchange system, they maximize O2 intake, but even so, dissolved O2 in water is a lot thes then the air (something like 35 ppt compared to atmosphere's 26%)

[padren]

no, fish make use of the O2 gas dissolved in seawater, they don't break apart water... they don't nerely have enough energy to do that, I bet not even if they completely combusted themselves. The capillaries in the gills work similiarly to the capilaries in alveoli, by using a counter-current exchange system, they maximize O2 intake, but even so, dissolved O2 in water is a lot thes then the air (something like 35 ppt compared to atmosphere's 26%)

 

Ah, that makes a lot more sense. I was pretty sure whatever they did, was pretty low energy, which is why I was curious. If fish could break apart water they wouldn't need those tubes in aquariums or the flapping treasure chests.

[Skye]

You know plants split water in photosynthesis right?