Plants cannot hear, feel or see like humans, but they have an advantage that we do not have: they can make energy directly from the Sun. That process of converting sunlight directly into usable energy, which we all know as photosynthesis, soon it can be a feat that humans will be able to emulate to harness the Sun’s energy for clean, storable and efficient fuel.
If so, it could open a new clean energy frontier. Enough energy reaches Earth in the form of sunlight in one hour to meet all the energy needs of human civilization for an entire year. Yulia Puskhar, a biophysicist and professor at Purdue College of Science, thinks she may have a way of harnessing solar energy by mimicking plants.
A new way to harness solar energy
Wind energy and solar energy are the two main forms of clean energy available. Adding a third, synthetic photosynthesis, would dramatically change the landscape of renewable energy. The ability to store energy easily, without requiring huge batteries, would dramatically improve humans’ ability to power society cleanly and efficiently. However, wind and photovoltaic turbines have disadvantages regarding environmental effects and complicating factors. Puskhar hopes that with artificial photosynthesis these problems can disappear.
“We and other researchers around the world are working very hard to try to find accessible energy,” said Puskhar. “Clean and sustainable energy that we can create with non-toxic and readily available elements. Our artificial photosynthesis is the way to go.
The closest process to artificial photosynthesis that we have today is photovoltaic technology, where a solar cell converts the Sun’s energy into electricity. This process is famous for its inefficiency, since it can only capture about 20% of the Sun’s energy. With photosynthesis this is much more efficient, being able to store 60% of the solar energy. Artificial photosynthesis does not have many physical limitations and could be achieved up to 80% of the Sun’s energy storage. This clean and efficient form of energy helps a lot to save energy.
An efficient but complex process
Scientists in Puskhar’s lab experiment with combinations of natural photosystem proteins and synthetic catalysts in an attempt to understand what works best and why. It also prioritizes the use of compounds and chemicals that are readily abundant on Earth, easily accessible, and non-toxic to the planet.
However, this is not an easy process, since artificial photosynthesis is somewhat difficult and complicated, due to the fact that photosynthesis is multifaceted . According to Puskhar, in about 10 to 15 years this technology will have advanced enough for commercial photosynthesis systems to start working. This research is funded by the National Science Foundation
Scientists have been working on artificial photosynthesis since the 1970s . In addition, they believe that photosynthesis, unlike other areas such as communication, flight or intelligence, has only evolved once, about 3,000 million years ago.
