Video Title: Breakthrough in Harnessing Power from Photosynthesis
Introduction by the Narrator:
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 in the journal
Nature says it could one day become an important source of clean energy.
Description of Photosynthesis:
At the beginning of photosynthesis, there is an explosion of energy, like 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 photosynthesis in 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.
Comparison with Solar Panels:
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, compared 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.
Future Challenges:
Now, what the next challenge is, is to design agents by which we can move that
electron to your phone or to an electrode. The new energy could look like solar
panels or a bioreactor like a brewery. Fascinating stuff!
Interview with Tommy Bakey:
Let's get some more insights and bring in Tommy Bakey. You just saw him there in
the report. Mr. Bakey, 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 sitting in a bar when we came up with this idea. There's a
real experiment; we actually didn't know what would happen, and we 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."
Impact on Renewable Energy:
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 quite interesting because we already rely on photosynthesis for everything
we eat and for everything that we breathe. As we are really good at it, as outlined,
what we think now is that we might be able to rely on the plant world also to power
some of our devices.
Environmental Considerations:
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 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 it actually takes
carbon from the atmosphere, which is something that traditional solar panels
wouldn't be able to do.
Future Applications:
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 energy, so the amount it costs to make it and install it, and the efficiency
that you get at the power 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
photovoltaic, but what we can claim is that it could lead to incredibly cheap solar
panels because you can just add, as I said before, light and water and you get a
quite good solar cell. So hopefully being able to use the abundance of water and
light that we have on this planet, we can develop 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.