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Another Milestone in Hybrid Artificial Photosynthesis
(Please note, US Federal research lab. Copyright concerns are nil.)
https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2015/08/24/another-milestone-in-hybrid-artificial-photosynthesis/
[font face=Serif][font size=5]Another Milestone in Hybrid Artificial Photosynthesis[/font]
[font size=4]Berkeley Lab Researchers Use Solar Energy and Renewable Hydrogen to Produce Methane[/font]
News Release Lynn Yarris (510) 486-5375 • August 24, 2015
[font size=3]A team of researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) developing a bioinorganic hybrid approach to artificial photosynthesis have achieved another milestone. Having generated quite a buzz with their hybrid system of semiconducting nanowires and bacteria that used electrons to synthesize carbon dioxide into acetate, the team has now developed a hybrid system that produces renewable molecular hydrogen and uses it to synthesize carbon dioxide into methane, the primary constituent of natural gas.
“This study represents another key breakthrough in solar-to-chemical energy conversion efficiency and artificial photosynthesis,” says Peidong Yang, a chemist with Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division and one of the leaders of this study. “By generating renewable hydrogen and feeding it to microbes for the production of methane, we can now expect an electrical-to-chemical efficiency of better than 50 percent and a solar-to-chemical energy conversion efficiency of 10-percent if our system is coupled with state-of-art solar panel and electrolyzer.”
…
“In our latest work, we’ve demonstrated two key advances,” says Chris Chang. “First, our use of renewable hydrogen for carbon dioxide fixation opens up the possibility of using hydrogen that comes from any sustainable energy source, including wind, hydrothermal and nuclear. Second, having demonstrated one promising organism for using renewable hydrogen, we can now, through synthetic biology, expand to other organisms and other value-added chemical products.”
The concept in the two studies is essentially the same – a membrane of semiconductor nanowires that can harness solar energy is populated with bacterium that can feed off this energy and use it to produce a targeted carbon-based chemical. In the new study, the membrane consisted of indium phosphide photocathodes and titanium dioxide photoanodes. Whereas in the first study, the team worked with Sporomusa ovata, an anaerobic bacterium that readily accepts electrons from the surrounding environment to reduce carbon dioxide, in the new study the team populated the membrane with Methanosarcina barkeri, an anaerobic archaeon that reduces carbon dioxide using hydrogen rather than electrons.
“Using hydrogen as the energy carrier rather than electrons makes for a much more efficient process as molecular hydrogen, through its chemical bonds, has a much higher density for storing and transporting energy,” says Michelle Chang.
…[/font][/font]
[font size=4]Berkeley Lab Researchers Use Solar Energy and Renewable Hydrogen to Produce Methane[/font]
News Release Lynn Yarris (510) 486-5375 • August 24, 2015
[font size=3]A team of researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) developing a bioinorganic hybrid approach to artificial photosynthesis have achieved another milestone. Having generated quite a buzz with their hybrid system of semiconducting nanowires and bacteria that used electrons to synthesize carbon dioxide into acetate, the team has now developed a hybrid system that produces renewable molecular hydrogen and uses it to synthesize carbon dioxide into methane, the primary constituent of natural gas.
“This study represents another key breakthrough in solar-to-chemical energy conversion efficiency and artificial photosynthesis,” says Peidong Yang, a chemist with Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division and one of the leaders of this study. “By generating renewable hydrogen and feeding it to microbes for the production of methane, we can now expect an electrical-to-chemical efficiency of better than 50 percent and a solar-to-chemical energy conversion efficiency of 10-percent if our system is coupled with state-of-art solar panel and electrolyzer.”
…
“In our latest work, we’ve demonstrated two key advances,” says Chris Chang. “First, our use of renewable hydrogen for carbon dioxide fixation opens up the possibility of using hydrogen that comes from any sustainable energy source, including wind, hydrothermal and nuclear. Second, having demonstrated one promising organism for using renewable hydrogen, we can now, through synthetic biology, expand to other organisms and other value-added chemical products.”
The concept in the two studies is essentially the same – a membrane of semiconductor nanowires that can harness solar energy is populated with bacterium that can feed off this energy and use it to produce a targeted carbon-based chemical. In the new study, the membrane consisted of indium phosphide photocathodes and titanium dioxide photoanodes. Whereas in the first study, the team worked with Sporomusa ovata, an anaerobic bacterium that readily accepts electrons from the surrounding environment to reduce carbon dioxide, in the new study the team populated the membrane with Methanosarcina barkeri, an anaerobic archaeon that reduces carbon dioxide using hydrogen rather than electrons.
“Using hydrogen as the energy carrier rather than electrons makes for a much more efficient process as molecular hydrogen, through its chemical bonds, has a much higher density for storing and transporting energy,” says Michelle Chang.
…[/font][/font]
