Photosynthesis a nearly 100% efficient converter of light to chemical energy
5 January 2008
“Photosynthesis should make any short-list of Nature’s spectacular accomplishments. Through the photosynthetic process, green plants and cyanobacteria are able to transfer energy from sunlight and initiate its conversion into chemical energy with an efficiency of nearly 100-percent. If we can learn to emulate Nature’s technique and create artificial versions of photosynthesis, then we, too, could effectively tap into the sun as a clean, efficient, sustainable and carbon-neutral source of energy for our technology.”
http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/PBD-follow-the-energy.html
I’d like to find other sources confirm this, but it seems legit. If this is the case, biofuel and biomass energy is much more viable than I had thought before. The problem, of course, is that photosynthesis creates chemical energy, which is much more difficult to transfer and use than the electricity made by solar panels. Furthermore, it has to be burned (at least with current technology) in order to be burned, a very inefficient transfer of energy, and, in doing so, it causes many of the same environmental problems that we currently experience from petroleum use.
If there were a way to have have a photosynthesis reaction that created electrical energy instead of chemical energy, or a solar panel that behaved like chlorophyll, then we’d experience the best of both worlds.
