Enough of politics...how about a little science for today?
With the promise of gas prices rising again and a depletable supply of oil, the time to start developing alternate sources of energy is long past. One promising field is artificial photosynthesis. The sun pumps out an amazing amount of energy, but solar panels can only capture about 30% of it, although they're getting better all the time.
While the main purpose of natural photosynthesis is to nourish the plant (and, in the larger scale of nature, cleanses the air), the purposes of artificial photosynthesis are different, more specific to whether the output is carbon or oxygen. These purposes include splitting water to produce hydrogen for fuel cells and carbon fixation for biofuels.
The article "How Artificial Photosynthesis Works" from How Stuff works by Julia Layton explains the process. There is now a Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP), established in 2010 as a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Energy Innovation Hub. An article, dated April of 2012, at Science Daily reports "Artificial Photosynthesis Breakthrough: Fast Molecular Catalyzer."
Details of the photosynthesic process are amazingly complex, so I opted for a much-simplified diagram from Estrella Mountain Community College's page on photosynthesis.
I've long thought that artificial photosynthesis would lend itself to developing a battery. Apparently so do two chemists at the University of Texas -- Christopher Bielawski and Jonathan Sessler. Their work is detailed in the article, dated September 2010, "Electron Switch Between Molecules Points Way to New High-Powered Organic Batteries."
Note: this post was updated in May, 2016. And there's a lot more information on this topic out there.
-- Marge
With the promise of gas prices rising again and a depletable supply of oil, the time to start developing alternate sources of energy is long past. One promising field is artificial photosynthesis. The sun pumps out an amazing amount of energy, but solar panels can only capture about 30% of it, although they're getting better all the time.
While the main purpose of natural photosynthesis is to nourish the plant (and, in the larger scale of nature, cleanses the air), the purposes of artificial photosynthesis are different, more specific to whether the output is carbon or oxygen. These purposes include splitting water to produce hydrogen for fuel cells and carbon fixation for biofuels.
The article "How Artificial Photosynthesis Works" from How Stuff works by Julia Layton explains the process. There is now a Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP), established in 2010 as a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Energy Innovation Hub. An article, dated April of 2012, at Science Daily reports "Artificial Photosynthesis Breakthrough: Fast Molecular Catalyzer."
Details of the photosynthesic process are amazingly complex, so I opted for a much-simplified diagram from Estrella Mountain Community College's page on photosynthesis.
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I've long thought that artificial photosynthesis would lend itself to developing a battery. Apparently so do two chemists at the University of Texas -- Christopher Bielawski and Jonathan Sessler. Their work is detailed in the article, dated September 2010, "Electron Switch Between Molecules Points Way to New High-Powered Organic Batteries."
Note: this post was updated in May, 2016. And there's a lot more information on this topic out there.
-- Marge
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