4 ms·

This makes me wonder what the conversion efficiency and price per watt for a tree is. Trees (plants in general) already do photosynthesis really well, so why c

• ars 17y ago
  Why do you need to genetically engineer it? Grow a tree, cut it down, burn it. Done. Or grow switchgrass and burn it instead of coal. Or burn corn. And ignore the stupid ethanol thing.
  • camccann 17y ago
    If you want to take that route, one of the most promising approaches is via "algaculture"--basically cultivating oily pond scum in shallow pools, then skimming off the algae and drying/pressing it to extract useful oil.
• graphene 17y ago
  Trees (plants in general) already do photosynthesis really well As I understand it, that's not exactly true; photosynthetic compounds are very efficient at harvesting light, but the chemical conversion to energy-carrying compunds is rather inefficient, I believe on the order of 1%. That said, those compounds are probably more valuable per joule than electricity since there is no storage problem, so it's hard to compare the two. The reason we can't simply genetically engineer an organism that converts sunlight into electricity (or fuels) is that at the moment, neither the photon harvesting process nor the chemical conversion process are well enough understood to try to replicate.
  • MikeCapone 17y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_efficiency http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_efficiency
• Groxx 17y ago
  Put simply, trees make sugar, not electricity. We could burn the sugar... as coal...