The leaves use chemical catalysts and bacteria to convert carbon dioxide from the air into alcohol, which can be burned as fuel.
What do a round leaf of a tree, a pointed leaf like a blade of grass and a single cell of algae have in common? They all produce fuel from a simple combination of water, sunlight and carbon dioxide through photosynthesis. Scientists now claim that they managed to reproduce this trick, and even improve it, using an "artificial leaf".
the chemist Daniel Nosera from Harvard University and his team, in collaboration with Pamela Silver, an expert in synthetic biology from Harvard Medical School, built a kind of living battery, which they call a "June leaf", which combines biology and technology. The device uses electricity generated from sunlight through a photovoltaic panel as an energy source to chemically break down water into oxygen and hydrogen. Bacteria integrated in the system feed on hydrogen and use it to convert carbon dioxide from the air into alcohol that can be burned as fuel. The researchers presented their first device for artificial photosynthesis in 2015. This facility was able to produce 216 milligrams of coal fuel from every liter of water, but it had an unfortunate side effect: the catalyst enabling the chemical reactions to break down water, which was composed of nickel, molybdenum and zinc, poisoned the bacteria.
The team therefore set out on a quest to find a better catalyst. The researchers recently reported In the article In the journal Science such a catalyst was found: an alloy of cobalt and phosphorus that is already in use as a coating against fusion (corrosion) in plastic and metal parts. Incorporating the new catalyst into the upgraded version of the bionic leaf boosted its efficiency in the production of alcohol fuels, such as iso-propanol and iso-butanol, to about 10%. In other words, for every kilowatt-hour of electricity, the bacteria converted 130 grams of CO2 from the air into 60 grams of isopropanol. Such a conversion ratio is about 10 times higher than that of natural photosynthesis.
Nosera says the new bioreactor technology will be able to combine the excess carbon dioxide in the air into fuels. This could help mitigate the air pollution problems that are warming the world and at the same time provide cleaner fuel to populations that do not have access to modern energy sources.
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Banan May
What bothers me is not that they don't consider the price (although there is no justification for not considering the time the process takes) what bothers me is that they present the development as "10 times more efficient royal leaves" so it sounds like they have developed a 10 times more efficient way to produce energy from the sun. And that is not true at all. There is no connection between the development and photosynthesis and their product does not produce energy from the sun at all, it turns hydrogen into fuel as a liquid liquid. (of course with an energy worker)
What is most ridiculous is that to produce hydrogen you need electricity and most of the electricity is produced from fuel. The whole point of a hydrogen blitzer is that the way to create it (electrolysis) is energetically efficient and its return to electricity (fuel cells) is also very efficient and in addition it has a lot of energy per unit weight. Here it is proposed to convert the hydrogen in another procedure that will waste energy into alcohol, but alcohol can only be used in internal combustion engines with poor energy utilization. And in addition, unlike hydrogen, which does not emit smoke and pollution, only water vapor, the burning of alcohol-based fuel (iso-propanol and iso-butanol) will not be much different in terms of health damage from air pollution and regular diesel. And without mentioning the use of heavy metals and phosphorus in the process.
For those who responded before.
Cost and competitiveness may not be clear at an early stage for various reasons
Therefore it is difficult to know what the final cost will be if the research progresses at all:
A. The subject in initial research and with the progress of the research and willingness of companies
and individuals to take part in the development of the subject will be possible (as in many other cases)
Depreciation of a process.
B. In many countries there is a "green tax" that increases the price proportionally
Fossil energy, for example the hybrid cars in Israel are benefiting
from such taxation.
There are many reasons to be skeptical about the process but it should not be completely ruled out.
You're right, it also seems to me that some important details are missing here, such as financial cost and the time it takes for the process to occur. In any case, this week there was an episode on TV about global warming, and they showed such an outrageous segment with Donald Trump, the one who is going to be the president of the United States in a few days. Trump spoke with such mockery and disdain about the claim of 97% of the world's climate scientists that the Earth has been warming at a dramatic rate in recent years as a result of human actions.
I didn't check but I imagine he also denies the theory of evolution, sad.
what is this nonsense Sounds like the worst kind of advertising. Data and numbers are scattered which, upon closer inspection, are seen to be almost meaningless, while the relevant data are for some reason missing. This patent really does not produce energy from the sun any more than photosynthesis. It uses a normal photovoltaic cell with normal efficiency. The only thing it does at all is turn hydrogen into alcohol. What does it have to do with comparing the efficiency of photosynthesis in the production of sugar from light to the production of alcohol from hydrogen? Of course, it would be more efficient to use hydrogen straight away (fuel cells have excellent energy utilization. And with this method, you have to turn the hydrogen into alcohol = another waste of energy, and then you still have to burn the alcohol in an internal combustion engine, which has poor energy utilization)
There is also no reference to the time it takes for the process and according to what is written it produced less than a gram per liter of water.
rival
There will not be a cheaper method than oil in about the next hundred years. For the simple reason that the cost of oil production is zero, especially in places like the Gulf. If they manage to develop green energy systems that are cheaper than oil today, oil prices will simply drop. The main reason for today's oil prices is the inadvertent creation of the major oil producers. In short, we should not wait for it to be more profitable to use green energy. We must understand that a price must be paid for reducing pollution, otherwise the price that everyone will pay in the end will be much higher.
And what about the cost? Any word on the matter? Will this method finally be more economical than using fossil fuel (oil, gas, coal)? Or is this still not the news we were waiting for?