Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Artificial Photosynthesis - The Next Giant Green Power Plant, Generator

Do you know that an hour of sunlight falls on earth is approximately equal to the energy that a planet uses in a year? So are we running short of energy? You tell me...
But the remaining problem is, for centuries researches have been striving to solve the mystery of breaking sun energy into applicable one. This chemistry reactions have long ago been solved by Nature.
The leaf of a plant can do what we call Photosynthesis that absorbs energy directly from the sun. The effectiveness of Photosynthesis is very high leaving humans' invention like solar panels far away behind. The most efficient currently known solar panel can only convert about 6% of sun energy. We waste the other 93% of free sun energy that's available in abundance.
So, for years scientists are trying hard to find out what and how complex chemistry takes action behind this Photosynthesis process. Once this mystery is solved then we can mimic the process and create somewhat Artificial Photosynthesis to convert solar energy into applicable forms of energy with high efficiency.
What does The Plant Actually Do in Photosynthesis?
Very simple to say, "Splitting Water Molecules". As you might have known, Water is built by 2 Hydrogen and 1 Oxygen Molecules.
But, splitting water molecules requires very complex chemical reactions. The action takes place in leaves, algae, phytoplankton, and other green organisms. Basically, the plants break water (H2O) into its components Hydrogen and Oxygen.
The Oxygen Molecules is released to the air, and we use them to breathe our lives, that's why we don't want these green organisms population continually decrease in numbers, because we and all the planet depend on them.
The Hydrogen is used to convert Carbon Dioxide that's taken from air into Carbon-Based Organic Molecules. These Carbon-Based Molecules can be said as the food for the plants, these molecules are used to build plants' tissues.
Once the scientists solved the mystery of Photosynthesis and create an Artificial Photosynthesis then we can use the Hydrogen Molecules that has been split and use them to replace Gasoline. And currently the scientists are working hard to solve this case.
So, if plants have already solved their energy needs a very long time ago, we don't need to find other technologies to fulfill ours. What we need is to study the plants and learn
from them.
As the saying goes, "If the Leaf can do it, so can we".

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