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Unclickbaiting the title: Photosynthetic power sources would absorb CO2 or Photosynthesis could generate electricity while absorbing CO2 (according to the a

by Aachen 2y ago

Unclickbaiting the title: Photosynthetic power sources would absorb CO2 or Photosynthesis could generate electricity while absorbing CO2 (according to the article. Using "could and would" because it doesn't seem to have been built, only modeled/computed/predicted. The paper linked in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40668458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40668458 does not mention the absorbing aspect if I'm skimming the conclusion right but maybe it's implied because plants are known to take carbon from the atmosphere?)

sigmoid10 2y ago
From the paper it seems like they did build a demonstrator to test their model. This is of course very far from a practical power supply, but you can definitely scratch the could. The only question is how this scales.
- PaulKeeble 2y ago
  And its actual practical power output and CO2 absording properties. Also with anything biological like this we want to know how long it lasts and what sort of maintenance is required, sounds like we have to dump a lot of algae somewhere since its growing.
  - yetihehe 2y ago
    If we want this to be at least remotely effective, we would have to dump some gigatonnes of algae somewhere. That's a LOT of organic matter just waiting to decay into methane etc.
    - sfn42 2y ago
      Could potentially be used for something like animal feed, fertilizer etc
- wernercd 2y ago
  "the question is how it scales" and which mega corp is going to buy and bury the tech. But seriously... stuff like this ("ZOMG MIRACLE BATTERY! MIRACLE SOLUTION! ZOMG!) seem to disappear because it takes years to turn an idea into a demo... and longer to get a demo to market and to scale. We are surrounded by stuff that followed that route but I hope stuff like this actually makes it to market.