From the title I thought the article was going to be a sarcastic description of plants.
Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel
41–50 of 157 posts
Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel
#42> Authors: Mohammad Asadi, Kibum Kim, Cong Liu, Aditya Venkata Addepalli, Pedram Abbasi, Poya Yasaei, Patrick Phillips, Amirhossein Behranginia, José M. Cerrato, Richard Haasch, Peter Zapol, Bijandra Kumar, Robert F. Klie, Jeremiah Abiade, Larry A. Curtiss, Amin Salehi-Khojin I wonder how many of the scientists who made this discovery would be banned from entering the United States by Donald Trump and the Republican…
Don't know of course, though it appears to be a "diverse" group who worked on the project. The salient point is Trump has made it clear he was talking about illegal entrants and delaying entry for individuals coming from areas where terrorism is endemic, until a vetting process is established. There are a great number of professionals from Muslim countries regularly admitted who contribute to American society and culture and that would not change.
Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel
#43I wonder what the effeicency is compared to growing and burning trees (which of course, also capture CO2 and sunlight and turn them into burnable fuel).
Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel
#44I don't want to poo-poo this achievement, but is another burnable fuel really what we want at this point?
You're "burning fuel" in your own body as you sit there in your chair typing.
So, yes.
Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel
#45How many times per year do we see this? I'll give a shit when I can buy a panel of these cells off Amazon.
Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel
#46This is wonderful! We're surrounded by life forms that turn water, CO2 and sunlight into energy. I figure there must be some way to harness this process. I wonder how much power a large tree takes in from its leaves. If we could interface with its root system, perhaps we could extract newly created starch, and either store it or burn it off. Image a huge concrete power plant with large trees growing out of it.
There is a simple way:
1. Plant tree 2. Wait 20 years 3. Chop tree 4. Burn tree in steam engine and generate electricity.
However, that's a long time for a relatively small amount of energy (not even counting logistics losses here). Most trees are just not very efficient at converting solar energy/CO2 into fuel (wood). There are better results being looked in with algae that might result in fuel some time, but it's still in research.
Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
The key difference in my opinion is that this process would not be competing for land with existing crops. We could do both.
Yes it would, sun rays only hit the ground once.
There are plenty of areas of this planet where plants don't grow because the climate is too harsh (not enough water and/or extreme temperatures)
Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, that's not likely to happen. Photosynthesis is pretty inefficient, typical plants have a radiant energy to chemical energy conversion efficiency between 0.1% and 2%. Most commercially available solar panels have more than 10 times this efficiency.[1] [1] http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/109739/is-plant-p...
Sure, but I bet your solar panels don't manufacture and maintain themselves. To the GP's point, the total cost of ownership of a plant that makes gasoline-level fuel is going to be more about water and land than anything else. But the efficiency of solar panels, considering their subsidies, the rare minerals used in their manufacture, their delivery and their maintenance... I'm confident it's a lot less than e.g. coa…
>> "don't manufacture and maintain themselves"
Well, for any kind of industrial operation you'll want to plant the trees.. then there is the 10-20 year growth period that's kind of a problem for planning flexibility.. and then you need to chop them down and move them to the power plant which is a non-trivial and costly logistical constraint.
All the while the solar cell sits there and produces energy without any intervention. That's a big difference.. Also, wood does not scale well, there is just so much space for forests.
Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel
#49Interesting that it's a combination of hydrogen and carbon monoxide that it produces. Wonder what the safety implications are.
That's syngas, which is very useful; you can use it to make natural gas, petrol, and the whole range of petrochemicals we're used to.
Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but I bet your solar panels don't manufacture and maintain themselves. To the GP's point, the total cost of ownership of a plant that makes gasoline-level fuel is going to be more about water and land than anything else. But the efficiency of solar panels, considering their subsidies, the rare minerals used in their manufacture, their delivery and their maintenance... I'm confident it's a lot less than e.g. coa…
>> "don't manufacture and maintain themselves" Well, for any kind of industrial operation you'll want to plant the trees.. then there is the 10-20 year growth period that's kind of a problem for planning flexibility.. and then you need to chop them down and move them to the power plant which is a non-trivial and costly logistical constraint. All the while the solar cell sits there and produces energy without any inte…
Solar cells don't just sit there without intervention, and have larger up-front capital and labour costs than planting an orchard, or more appropriately, fuelwood or timber forests. And have a lifespan of 20-25 years.
Plants are a pretty neat technology, all told.