“Bionic Leaf” Makes Fuel From Sunlight
24th March 2015
Here’s a new way to make fuel from sunlight: starve a microbe nearly to death, then feed it carbon dioxide and hydrogen produced with the help of voltage from a solar panel. A newly developed bioreactor feeds microbes with hydrogen from water split by special catalysts connected in a circuit with photovoltaics. Such a batterylike system may beat either purely biological or purely technological systems at turning sunlight into fuels and other useful molecules, the researchers now claim.
“We think we can do better than plants,” says Joseph Torella of Boston Consulting Group, who helped lead the work published February 9 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
March 24th, 2015 at 12:49
“We think we can do better than plants,…”
WTF?!?
Any basic understanding of physics and chemistry renders this argument as nothing more than blathering insanity.
Plants have had millions of years to develop into highly efficient solar energy storage units. Plants are a renewable resource; you don’t need to make them bionic.