Posted on 03/28/2011 5:36:18 AM PDT by Normandy
At a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Anaheim, California, MIT Professor Dr. Daniel Nocera announced that a research team had achieved a long -sought-after for goal of artificially copying photosynthesis, the process by which plants turn sunlight into energy, to create electricity easily and cheaply.
(Excerpt) Read more at freeenergytimes.com ...
Seeds for a SciFi movie where the process is designed to be self replicating and gets spilled into the oceans. Massive red-tides on a global scale.
DOESN’T HE KNOW THAT CREATES CO2!?!?!?!
From the article: The “artificial leaf” is a thin sheet of metal, electronics and catalysts about the size of a credit card. When placed in a gallon of water in direct sunlight Nocera said this device could create enough electricity to power a home in the developing world.
Bzzzzt! Sorry, this fails the basic physics test unless the "home in the developing world" doesn't need much electricity. Credit cards are 85.60 × 53.98 mm, which is 0.0046 square meters. Solar energy is about 1 kilowatt per square meter, so this would produce 4.6 watts at 100% efficiency. That's 1.65 kilowatt hours per month for 12 hours of sun per day. To give some comparison, my electric bill averages around 800 kWh per month. Now maybe if you had an array of them it would produce a useful amount.
Swamp Thing says: BS!..................
The article just mentions taking in water and producing hydrogen and oxygen, but doesn't take in any carbon dioxide. This might be interesting, but unless it is taking in CO2 it isn't photosynthesis. Stupid article writer.
I guess that’s another way to power Nissan’s coal burning car. At least the name Leaf would make sense.
Great - now gimme back my light bulbs.
As KarlinOhio said, you have it backwards. Science 101: photosynthesis absorbes CO2 and releases O2........
Be like planting a tree - if it works that is.......
Envirowacko’s will love it.....
which means that solar energy can NOW be stored*
The device bears no resemblance to Mother Nature’s counterparts on oaks, maples and other green plants, which scientists have used as the model for their efforts to develop this new genre of solar cells. About the shape of a poker card but thinner, the device is fashioned from silicon, electronics and catalysts, substances that accelerate chemical reactions that otherwise would not occur, or would run slowly. Placed in a single gallon of water in a bright sunlight, the device could produce enough electricity to supply a house in a developing country with electricity for a day, Nocera said. It does so by splitting water into its two components, hydrogen and oxygen.Note that he says "supply a house in a developing country", and does not give a figure as to the actual amount of energy produced per unit area.
Photosynthesis:
(1) Splits H2O into hydrogen and oxygen, then
(2) Joins that hydrogen to CO2 to produce sugar
Dr. Nocera's device does the first part, using sunlight to directly split H2O. This is a more useful process than directly producing electricity, since the hydrogen and oxygen can be stored until needed and used to drive a fuel cell.
this could be to the electric grid what the car was to the railroads. One of the biggest problems with green energy has been storage. when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t sun what then? With this if it is cheap enough the making of O2 and H2 could power the home. fuel cells have been stymied because of the lack of a H2 market. If the H2 become easy for a private person to make and use. It could be a new day. now they will have to design compact storage tanks for H2 or a way to compress the gas. safety concerns will also be a big deal. But if sunlight can make H2 and O2 cheaply the entire world as we know it has just changed...
the fact that US taxpayers are getting screwed on this is a problem
Here’s a video with Daniel Nocera talking a bit more about the process, and how they store the energy when the sun is not shining.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7ok8cOJbmo
I wonder what they syrup tastes like...?
I was going to hammer him on the energy content of one gallon of water, but it turns on gallon of water has 0.42 kg of hydrogen which will yield 16.7 kWh when recombined with oxygen (either by burning or in a fuel cell). That's a little less than my daily average and some (or a lot) will be lost to inefficiency, but at least it is in the right ballpark. I still disagree that a credit card sized solar cell will receive enough sunlight to do that conversion in a day unless a lot more light is focused on it.
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