Using Spinach to harvest natural photosynthesis

Spinach could power better solar cells


18:33 21 September 04

NewScientist.com news service

An electronic device that uses spinach to convert light into electrical charge has been developed by US researchers.

Shuguang Zhang at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US, and research collaborators integrated a protein complex derived from spinach chloroplasts with organic semiconductors to make a solar cell that could be combined with solid state electronics.

www.newscientist.com...

We should be looking for more effective ways to create energy that uses natural resourses, and waht better place to look than what mother nature does naturally.

I saw this and thought it was interesting. Especially if they can layer them to get even better energy capture and figure out how to keep the protiens from degrading.
From another story about an improved solar cell that gathers several colors of the spectrum to increase efficiency [also from New Scientist] :

Spectrolab, a subsidiary of Boeing based in California, US, has created a photovoltaic cell capable of converting 36 per cent of the Sun's rays into electricity. By contrast, ordinary existing solar cells are between 10 and 15 per cent energy efficient.

www.newscientist.com...
The spinach solar cell is already producing about 12% which is about average for current working solar cells, and with layering might do several times that well. Also if they can do it for various spectrum colors that would increase efficiency as well.

HERE IS SOMETHING ON HYDROGEN PRODUCTION :

Photosynthetic method
Here is an experimental technology for using adapted biological techniques to produce hydrogen from water that is 10 times as efficient as current industrial methods. The page is slightly dated [2003].

Energy efficiency index of the low current electrolysis should be refined, but in any case it will be greater than 10, that�s why there is every reason to think that a way to production of inexpensive hydrogen from water and transition to hydrogen energetic is opened.

guns.connect.fi...

Bacterial Production
I also had a thought, aren't there bacteria that produce hydrogen as a by product? I wonder if that also might be a more efficient method of producing hydrogen? I found this out on the web:

Purple bacteria carry out a biological HABER-BOSCH process. But if nitrogen for the ammonia-synthesis is not available, hydrogen will be released.

www.bionik.tu-berlin.de...