MIT researchers found out a way to create energy by mimicking the photosynthesis process that green plants acquire their energy from. Prof. Daniel G. Nocera and former MIT graduate student Alan F. Heyduk invented a hydrogen-producing compound. They also use a catalyst and small amounts of light.
The process is referred to by some as photosynthesis in a beaker. It could provide a cheap, clean future energy source (in addition to the many hydrogen producing methods available). It essentially creates a molecule to replace a leaf. Nocera explains, “our strategy is to use the energy of sunlight to drive reactants uphill to energy-rich products, thus harnessing the sun’s energy to create a renewable energy source in the future.”
“In the leaf, sugar and oxygen are energy-rich products. In our beaker, the sought-after fuels are hydrogen and a halogen, produced catalytically from the photochemical splitting of hydrohalic acid,” Nocera said.
It is known that photosynthesis is the powering phenomenta behind green plants’ life. It is also known that photosynthesis is not the most efficient way to produce energy, but summed in a plant’s lifetime, the Sun’s energetic effect is basically collected in the plant’s body (producing energy again when you burn it – that energy comes from the Sun, too, indirectly).
It would be nice to mimick plants like we mimick birds to fly. But will this happen in a useful time, before it’s not too late?
[via]
Liked it? Share onFacebook and Google +1:
| |  No comments yet.Break the ice! |  E-mail Updates |  |
| Also share story on: | Become our facebook fan |
Read next:
UK Researchers Use Bacteria to Generate Hydrogen from LandfillsAs you already know, Earth’s ecosystems are in a closed-loop. Researchers from the University of Birmingham have created a closed loop hydrogen energy eco-system based on two types of bacteria and a twist of fuel cell technology. How did they do that?
BioWave – free electricity from mimicking sea plantsA long time ago, nature set its oceans and the living things in them. There were plants residing on the bottom of the ocean, plants who sway back and forth, as the water moves around them. So, BioPower Systems from Australia thought that making an under-ocean energy collecting system whose movement resembles with the one [...]
Cheapest Way to Get Hydrogen: the Photoelectrochemical DiodePenn State researchers have found a cheaper method of producing hydrogen from water by the same old effect of electrolysis aided by the Sun’s rays. They do not use classic solar cells, because these are expensive, but made a nanotechnology-based solar cell, called photoelectrochemical diode, that is simplistically said on the bottom of the water holding recipe.
Algae Making Hydrogen – solution or biohazard?Recently, a team of biologists demonstrated that some algae, named Chlamydomonas reinhardtii can produce hydrogen in a specific environment. Normally, these bacterias produce oxygen, but the scientists modified their genes, added copper to block the oxygen production, so the cells’ photosynthesis begins to synthesize hydrogenase and produces hydrogen. The algae also need light in order [...]
Electrolysis Electrolysis is the technical name for using electricity to split water into its constituent elements, hydrogen and oxygen. The splitting of water is accomplished by passing an electric current through water. The electricity enters the water at the cathode, a negatively charged terminal, passes through the water and exists via the anode, the positively [...]
Comments from our readers
3167 total comments so far. What's your opinion ?- No comments on this article yet.
