Generate Solar Power By Stopping Photosynthesis - Engineers At University of Georgia

The recent advances in the research surrounding Solar Power Generation are just, plain remarkable. As a curious child, everyone who came across the term 'photosynthesis' knew that Sun was the food for plants. And now, as curious engineers, if we look at nature for inspiration, it is what we can call 'food for thought'. So, working closely with nature, when Ramaraja Ramasamy, assistant professor in the UGA College of Engineering, UGA graduate student Jessica Calkins and postdoctoral research associate Yogeswaran Umasankar came together, they had a result that can be called nothing but awe-inspiring. Together they have co-authored a paper that describes the process of using plants to generate electricity in the Journal of Energy and Environmental Science.

The process of photosynthesis is simple. Plants capture sunlight to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, which produces electrons, which in-turn help them create sugars as their food. These engineer have been able to interrupt in the way of plant's food making process. They stopped the photosynthesis to use the electrons before the plant converts them into sugar. The technology behind this operation involves separating out structures in the plant cell called 'thylakoids' and manipulate the proteins contained in them. These are then immobilized on a specially designed backing of carbon nanotubes (acting as electrical conductors), cylindrical structures that are nearly 50,000 times finer than a human hair and are sent along a wire.



This isn't first research of the kind, but these experiments have resulted in electrical current levels that are two orders of magnitude larger than those previously reported in similar systems. Quoting the words of Mr. Ramasamy,

If we are able to leverage technologies like genetic engineering to enhance stability of the plant photosynthetic machineries, I'm very hopeful that this technology will be competitive to traditional solar panels in the future.

We are very excited to see this green tech reach commercialisation. It is only a matter of time.

Via: #-Link-Snipped-# Full study: High photo-electrochemical activity of thylakoid–carbon nanotube composites for photosynthetic energy conversion - Energy & Environmental Science (RSC Publishing)