Scientists have found a way to extract energy from photosynthesis | DW News

now it's an exciting Breakthrough by scientists led by the University of Cambridge in a new and efficient way of harnessing power from photosynthesis it's a powerful chemical reaction that occurs in plants and the research published and the journal Nature says it could One Day become an important source of clean energy at the beginning of photosynthesis there is an explosion of energy lack of the source of a river extracting the energy from this stage has proved impossible so far thus until scientists tried lasers what we've done is we've taken a laser and shined it directly into the living cell this is a cyanobacterial cell and the wave of flash is a million billion times faster than your phone camera takes video the laser-led scientists see what's happening at the start of photos in synthesis and useful detail for the first time the laser showed the working of the electronics of the cell that gave researchers a Target once captured the electrons were chaperoned out by a molecule shown here by the white dots you can't get better efficiency than taking it right at the beginning of the photosynthetic chain because we're taking it right from the beginning of the chain we can reach the maximum efficiency possible in the experiment a dinner plate sized amount of the bacteria powered a computer for six months this kind of efficiency is helped by how good plants are at soaking up sunlight plants absorb 100 of light from the visible spectrum of the sun compare that to solar panels which absorb nearly a third less the way plants get energy from the Sun is through photosynthesis in photosynthesis plants take carbon dioxide from the air along with water and with the help of sunlight and chlorophyll they turn it into sugar and oxygen these end products mean the chemical reaction forms the basis of most life on Earth plants use some of the energy they capture for functions like growing moving towards or away from sunlight or for Distributing nutrients around their stems stalks and leaves but not all of the energy absorbed is used so scientists say the electrons taken from the plants are spare now what the next challenge is is to design agents by which we can move that electron to to you to your phone or to an electrode the new energy could look like solar panels or a bioreactor like a brewery fascinating stuff let's get some more insights and bring in Tommy bakey you just saw him there in the report Mr Becky thank you so much for coming into the show this is a remarkable Discovery how did you come up with the idea well we were actually uh sitting in a bar where we came up with this idea um there's a real experiment we actually didn't know what would happen and we were had a real privilege to really be there and go like wow we've actually managed to see these charges form in photosynthesis and then eventually worked out how to intercept them you've come about what everyone seems to be desperately looking for right now a powerful source of quite literally green energy what could your technology mean for the development of the renewable sector well it's it's quite um interesting because we already rely on uh focuses for everything we eat and for everything that we breathe and as we are really good eats outlined but what we think now is that we might be able to rely on the Plant World also to power some of our devices now how clean is the resulting energy really how about the process's own carbon emissions for example well photosynthesis actually grabs carbon from the atmosphere so it's a very difficult technical question to answer actually how green our specific technology is you have to take into account how you're making it where you have to transport it and how you might recycle it in the end but usefully using plant-based solar cells really all you need to do to make it is give it light and water and it has this additional advantage that actually takes carbon from the atmosphere which is something that traditional solar panels wouldn't be able to do it almost sounds too good to be true what needs to be done to use it on a bigger scale in the future well we've already outlined how for example we can use this technology to power computers for relatively short periods of time admittedly but when we push something out to the real world we have to consider What's called the levelized cost of Eligibility so the amount it costs to make it and install it and the uh efficiency that you get at the power that you get at that comes into What's called the levelized cost of energy now we can't claim that we're ever going to be as efficient as a silicon photovolta take but what we can claim is that it could lead to incredibly cheap solar panels because you can just add as I said before add light and water and you get a get quite a good solar cell so hopefully being able to use the the Abundant uh abundance of water and and light that we have on this planet we can develop really really cheap solar panels all around the world without expensive manufacturing processes what other areas of application are you looking at for your findings well photosynthesis has been used for humans for hundreds of thousands of years to produce food to produce fuels and to produce useful materials but now what we've outlined is maybe a new paradigm where we can use it for electricity production and for a whole wave of different electronic processes too Tommy bakey from the University of Cambridge thank you so much thank you very much

Channel: DW News

Views: 196,911

Keywords: DW News

Id: Aa2HdIFks30

Length: 6min 2sec (362 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 29 2023