UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Professor Richard Watt of Brigham Young University and his chemistry students found a new way to harvest energy from sunlight. And it takes only 20 minutes to do so.
Professor Richard Watt of Brigham Young University and his chemistry students found a new way to harvest energy from sunlight. And it takes only 20 minutes to do so.
The idea stemmed from suspicion that a common protein might react with sunlight to harvest its energy, in the same manner that chlorophyll does in synthesizing such energy for the plants.
So the students started with citric acid obtained from oranges and mixed it with protein. They dissolved gold powder into the solution. Then they put vials of the yellow-colored mixture in direct sunlight, and hoped that the idea works. And it did.
The mixture turned to purple, indicating that the gold atoms absorbed electrons from the other chemicals in the mixture, using the sunlight energy to bunch them together into small, purple-colored nanoparticles. The protein successfully used the sunlight to excite the citric acid and trigger the transfer of energy.
Compared to a high-powered tungsten mercury lamp, the new method works much slower. But the potential for an environmentally friendly energy source has just been unearthed. The next step will be to connect the protein to an electrode to channel it into a battery or fuel cell for storage. [Read full report]
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