The New Green Power, Photosyntesis

Photosynthesis and related processes can be applied to many more areas than just solar energy conversion. http://bioenergy.asu.edu/photosyn/education/photointro.html

Chemist Lisa Utschig tests a container of photosynthetic proteins linked with platinum nanoparticles, which can produce hydrogen from sunlight. Tiny bubbles of hydrogen are visible in the container at right. Credit:

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2011-05-nanoparticles-scientists-harvest-solar-fuels.html#jCp

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2011-05-nanoparticles-scientists-harvest-solar-fuels.html#jCp






The institute isn’t the only one working to develop artificial photosynthesis technology. Panasonic is working to create formic acid, a fuel that, like methanol, can be synthesized from CO2 and can be used in hydrogen fuel cells. A European team of researchers is developing solar jet fuel. And the New CO2 Fuels program at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science seeks to convert CO2 into fuel
This will and can take the place of solar when developed.
Future Directions.
Light energy is cheap, clean, and essentially inexhaustible. With limited supplies of fossil fuel and increasing concern about CO2 emissions, further development of technologies that make use of solar energy is inevitable. Current silicon-based technologies for the harvesting of solar energy require a very energy-intensive production process and even though they have improved significantly over the years in their efficiency, further development of photosynthesis-based technologies for energy collection is certainly warranted. However, photosynthesis and related processes can be applied to many more areas than just solar energy conversion. Realizing that novel designs and applications of light-mediated processes have enormous promise in the next decade and beyond, Arizona State University has started an initiative, Project Ingenhousz, named after the 18th century physician who discovered that light is needed for oxygen evolution by plants, and that only green parts of the plant carry out this process. The goal of the initiative is to capitalize on research progress and ideas in this area, and to more effectively interface academia, where many of the discoveries are made, with the private sector, where such discoveries are worked out further and applied.


http://bioenergy.asu.edu/photosyn/photoweb/individual.html
http://phys.org/news/2015-09-photosynthesis-creation-solar-fuel.html