how to make electricity using plants and sunshine

news.yahoo.com...

That's exactly what an international consortium of scientists have done, creating a truly green solar cell—and one that can be made from something as common as grass clippings. The findings are in the current issue of Nature: Scientific Reports.

This "electric nanoforest" only produces a trickle of electricity at present, but with refinement it could begin to produce useful amounts of current. Plus, the raw materials are durable and cheap: any living green vegetation will do—nature has seen to that. If such devices can be improved substantially enough, plant-based photovoltaics may finally bring affordable solar power to the remote villages where it's needed most.

i have just come across this article on yahoo and am still looking further into the technology but this is quite mind blowing to say the least and im shocked not to see it on ats yet

hopefully with all of the members on here we can find out a great deal more about this technology

perhaps it may only offer a small amount of energy now, but it sounds like this tech has the ability to give us a very bright future indeed

there are many links within the link to further information

this wont be replacing the coal company tomorrow, but perhaps a "few" days after that

"electrical power density of 81 µW/cm2 and photocurrent density of 362 µA/cm2" - that is impressive compared to other photosystem-based biophotovoltaic systems, but very, very, very far away from usefullness.

There is much to explore, and if I look at the slow advantages science was able to achieve with silicon-based photovoltaic (from 16 to 26% efficency took about 4 decades..) it will take decades to reach usability.

Nice finding, anyway. Any step towards independance from fossil fules is advancing the world.

reply to post by abovesecret

Thought I would add to your source material:

www.treehugger.com...

MIT reports, "The new system’s efficiency is 10,000 times greater than in the previous version — although in converting just 0.1 percent of sunlight’s energy to electricity, it still needs to improve another tenfold or so to become useful, he says."

Mershin states that improving efficiency means getting more of the PS-I substrate exposed to the sun, and he thinks the key to this is to mimic pine trees in a forest, the needles of which are the ideal shape for getting the most out of what sunlight is available, and the trees have branches all the way down the trunk to capture any sunlight that makes it through the top of the canopy.

Although this is in it's infancy, they are on the right track I guess. Note the simile to pine needles as the most efficient "design".

This is up their with the leaf. Totally AWESOME tech.

I think this type of scientific study would be more beneficial to everyone, rather than create things that need clean up procedures.

Just watched the video, yeah that would be awesome!



The only thing I would do is edit the title, it doesn't communicate what the info truly is. You make it sound like a guide, when its clearly educating us that this is a process that is being developed.

Originally posted by calnorak
This is up their with the leaf. Totally AWESOME tech.

I think this type of scientific study would be more beneficial to everyone, rather than create things that need clean up procedures.

Just watched the video, yeah that would be awesome!

edit on 7-2-2012 by calnorak because: (no reason given)

The only thing I would do is edit the title, it doesn't communicate what the info truly is. You make it sound like a guide, when its clearly educating us that this is a process that is being developed.

edit on 7-2-2012 by calnorak because: (no reason given)

the only reason i have the title as that, is because that was the title of the news story originally, (not sure if they changed it recently)


but love seeing more info from all of the posters so far, hopefully we can get a lot more information and ideas about this technology

maybe on small scale its not usable now but what about if we "used" a whole desert or abandoned area? could it at least offset anything anytime in the near future? thats a question i have to all members