Could a Photosynthesis 'Hack' Lead to New Ways of Generating Renewable Energy? (cnet.com) 40
"Researchers have 'hacked' the earliest stages of photosynthesis," according to a new announcement from the University of Cambridge.
CNET reports: Scientists have studied photosynthesis in plants for centuries, but an international team believes they've unlocked new secrets in nature's great machine that could revolutionize sustainable fuels and fight climate change. The team says they've determined it's possible to extract an electrical charge at the best possible point in photosynthesis. This means harvesting the maximum amount of electrons from the process for potential use in power grids and some types of batteries. It could also improve the development of biofuels. While it's still early days, the findings, reported in the journal Nature, could reduce greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere and provide insights to improve photovoltaic solar panels.
The key breakthrough came when researchers observed the process of photosynthesis at ultrafast timescales. "We can take photos at different times which allow us to watch changes in the sample really, really quickly — a million billion times faster than your iPhone," Dr. Tomi Baikie, from the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory, told CNET....
Previous demonstrations connected cyanobacteria, algae and other plants to electrodes to create so-called bio-photoelectrochemical cells that tap into the photosynthetic process to generate electricity. Baikie said they were surprised to discover a previously unknown pathway of energy flow at the beginning of the process that could enable extracting the charge in a more efficient way.
CNET reports: Scientists have studied photosynthesis in plants for centuries, but an international team believes they've unlocked new secrets in nature's great machine that could revolutionize sustainable fuels and fight climate change. The team says they've determined it's possible to extract an electrical charge at the best possible point in photosynthesis. This means harvesting the maximum amount of electrons from the process for potential use in power grids and some types of batteries. It could also improve the development of biofuels. While it's still early days, the findings, reported in the journal Nature, could reduce greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere and provide insights to improve photovoltaic solar panels.
The key breakthrough came when researchers observed the process of photosynthesis at ultrafast timescales. "We can take photos at different times which allow us to watch changes in the sample really, really quickly — a million billion times faster than your iPhone," Dr. Tomi Baikie, from the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory, told CNET....
Previous demonstrations connected cyanobacteria, algae and other plants to electrodes to create so-called bio-photoelectrochemical cells that tap into the photosynthetic process to generate electricity. Baikie said they were surprised to discover a previously unknown pathway of energy flow at the beginning of the process that could enable extracting the charge in a more efficient way.
Could a Photosynthesis 'Hack' Lead to New Ways of (Score:1)
No
Re: (Score:2)
No
That's right, if the title of the article asks a question the answer is almost certainly, "No."
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Photosynthesis is usually limited by the availability of water and/or CO2. If we harvest the energized electrons directly, rather than letting them flow into the generation of ATP and glucose, we can bypass those bottlenecks.
Nature is not always the way (Score:4, Interesting)
How does photosynthesis compare with PV, or solar thermal in terms of efficiency? Sure, it's nice to understand how nature does it. But a man-made (i.e. photovoltaic) process might be easier to optimize.
We didn't copy birds to produce human flight. Which is a good thing when the cabin crew starts handing out the meals.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
How does photosynthesis compare with PV, or solar thermal in terms of efficiency?
For starters, I'm guessing they all work better during the day. :-)
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How does photosynthesis compare with PV, or solar thermal in terms of efficiency?
I was thinking the same thing too - photosythesis has pretty low efficiency compared to panels (say 4% vs 20%), but this is still cool.
For example, if you could grow this stuff, and just access the electrons somehow, it might be much cheaper than making panels and the benefit flows from missing out on constructing the panel, and the plant material might be a modest carbon sink too - so before we poo poo it, let's give a chance.
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Well... talking about PV efficiency depends greatly on what step in the chain you stop at. I mean, if you go all the way from sunlight to usable target biomass accumulation, you can get down to a fraction of a percent for many fuel crops. On the other hand, the very initial phase of photon capture is quite efficient. I haven't read the paper in question here, but from the summary, they're talking about stopping after the first steps.
Photosynthesis is actually rather curious in how it works. It is electr
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Honestly, I'm personally more interested in the opposite tack: using industrial chemicals and grid electricity to power plant growth. There was some fascinating research a while back on feeding autotrophs with acetate (think neutralized vinegar), which can be produced at pretty good efficiently industrially, and which slots straight into the energy-producing (aka, ATP-producing) metabolic citric acid cycle (remember that energetic compounds enter the citric acid cycle as acetyl CoA - it's powered by acetat
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ED: "talking about photosynthesis efficiency depends..."
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Cool, but already at a disadvantage.
Two types of photosynthesis (Score:2)
My understanding is that some plants (maize?) are much more efficient than others, they have different chemistry. Which does not seem to be a huge advantage to them, surprisingly.
The big advantage of plants vs solar cells is that the former grow, whereas the latter need to be manufactured.
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How does photosynthesis compare with PV, or solar thermal in terms of efficiency?
Photosynthesis is less efficient but cheaper.
PV is more effective per area and doesn't need water and fertilizer.
Solar thermal is fading away as PV improves.
We didn't copy birds to produce human flight.
Actually, we did. Early airplanes, including the Wright Flyer, flexed their wings like birds. Rigid wings, ailerons, and elevators came later.
Re: Nature is not always the way (Score:2)
The Wright Flyer had partially flexible wings, but it was a fixed-wing aircraft whose principle of lift wasn't based upon those wings flapping. The flexibility was for stabilization/control, and was based upon Wilbur's observations of birds.
Nonetheless, I think the OP's point stands, we didn't figure out how to fly by making flapping wings.
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Nonetheless, I think the OP's point stands, we didn't figure out how to fly by making flapping wings.
Agree, nature is and has always been an inspiration and a very good one, however despite early attempts of copying flapping wings (which failed miserably), people made machines far exceeding nature (e.g. gliding efficiency for gliders reaches easily 60 whilst best birds have around 22) and (fortunately) people never attempted to copy cheetahs when making cars.
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If you can have a bunch of plants or trees to produce even minimal electricity, it will be one more plus point to potentially have people letting there be alot more greenery around.
Which in turn can help with oxygen production / removal of O2. Climate change, in terms.
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If you mean: how many kW of power hammering on a square meter can be utilized in a PV module versus a new photosynthesis module - the efficiency is poor.
If you talk about a single photon moving an hydrogen atom - it is high.
I guess your question is the wrong question: how much does a square meter cost and how much power does it produce, makes more sense?
To be fair. (Score:1)
Interesting! Wish them luck (Score:5, Interesting)
The paper (Score:5, Informative)
The paper: Baikie, Wey, et al. [researchgate.net]
perspective (Score:2)
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It is right in the summary... "a million billion", in units real scientists use.
Re:LOL an iphone is not a standard for speed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:LOL an iphone is not a standard for speed (Score:4, Informative)
That was a lot of work to tell us you didn't understand he's talking about frames per second.
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Stung, hey?
You know, if you didn't start out with "lol, what an idiot this 'scientist' dummy is," maybe you wouldn't get so worked up.
Gives a whole new meaning to the term (Score:2)
Maybe the hippies were right all along
NO. (Score:2)
Its efficiency is abysmal (Score:5, Insightful)
Nature has been fine tuning the photosynthesis for 3 billion years and it has not improved it beyond 2.5%. So it is unlikely to get any better.
Airplanes fly faster / higher than any nature designed flying body/machine.
Photovoltaics are a lot more efficient than photosynthesis.
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Will birds and plants make it through human self-extinction?
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The efficiency of photosynthesis for producing complex organic molecules from sunlight and atmospheric CO2 is pretty impressive.
This field is about understanding the fundamental details of photosynthesis, and engineering it to do desireable chemistry. It could very well be more efficient than non-biological processes, but even if it's not, a mostly self-maintaining and self-replicating system that, say, takes in light, air and water and spits out kerosene might be pretty useful.
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The 2.5 % efficiency is based on the amount of sunlight the plants soak up and the final "energy", the heat value of the biomass produced by the plants. If you tap in and milk photons or electrons from the bio chemistry, you might not have a self replicating, self maintaining biological system.
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Algae can reach more like 7% sunlight to biomass efficiency. It's certainly possible to get algae or yeast to happily produce hydrogen from water, or various alcohols from water and CO2 (you might be familiar with some of these), or oil. I don't really feel like calculating the conversion efficiency for PV to oil, but it's not going to be radically more than the biologics do, and might be a lot less. Enzymes are typically more efficient than non-biological processes for organic synthesis.
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The energy efficiency of the photosynthesis process is abysmal, around 2.5%.
That is wrong. The energy efficiency is nearly 100%.
However only 2.5% of the photons hitting the plant are used/useable for photosynthesis.
The hydrogen transport during photosynthesis is done by a single photon. Can not be more efficient.
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Airplanes fly faster / higher than any nature designed flying body/machine.
Agreed on speed, regarding flight height, most planes don't fly as high as some birds (vultures at 37000 feet), so there's that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]