6 ms·

Mimicking photosynthesis at this level, using durable inorganic materials like copper and perovskite, feels like one of those "quiet breakthroughs" that could e

Mimicking photosynthesis at this level, using durable inorganic materials like copper and perovskite, feels like one of those "quiet breakthroughs" that could end up being a game-changer if scaled up

lukan 1y ago
In what way? Energy production? I believe there are quite some breakthrougs required for this to compete with cheap solar panels.
- ozim 1y ago
  From the article: Researchers built a perovskite and copper-based device that converts carbon dioxide into C2 products – precursory chemicals of innumerable products in our everyday lives, from plastic polymers to jet fuel.
  - 9dev 1y ago
    Converting CO2 on its own seems like a useful thing, don’t you think?
    - myrmidon 1y ago
      Not necessarily. The problem is the somewhat low atmospheric CO2 concentration; this is why all the "lets just pollute now and remove the CO2 from the atmosphere with some futuristic tech!" approaches are also kinda doomed, because even if you had some workable process that did not cause excessive costs by itself (like this one possibly), you still need to process millions of cubic meters of air, every year, just to compensate for a single (!!) car.
      - leereeves 1y ago
        That sounds like a lot, but a million cubic meters is only a cube 100 meters on each side. So it's on the order of the air in a football stadium. A 1200 CFM home air conditioning system moves roughly 20 million cubic meters per year.
        myrmidon 1y ago
        Sure. But thats still very much a lower bound, and it makes a bunch of idealizing assumptions that are hopelessly overoptimistic (assuming your intake gets the full 400ppm of CO2, and you manage to extract all of it in one go). Even from those numbers, you already get up to a football stadium of processed air per hour for every small town. For a big city, you need to process that football stadium worth of air every second. Building infrastructure of that magnitude is a major commitment, and if most nations can not be arsed to replace a small number of fossil power plants per country, I honestly don't see us building large air processing plants in every single town in a timely manner (that are extremely likely to be less profitable than replacing the power plants).
        themaninthedark 1y ago
        What is the size of these process units? Can it be coupled with current air processes? Every house, office building and factory has air handling units. Factories and other industrial sites also use compressors.
        teamonkey 1y ago
        Right now they’re a fantasy so they can be as large or small as your imagination permits.
        gus_massa 1y ago
        It converts CO2 and H2O into ethane and ethylene, oversimplifying the output is natural gas. What do you do with the natural gas? You can put it in pipes and send it to a central location, but you need pumps and the pipes are a nightmare. You can store it in a local tank but you need a pump again, and burn it but it release the CO2 again. Using a solar panel and a battery is easier and more efficient. (Do they need also some water pipes?) For a distributed production, solar panels are much better. Pipes and pumps may work in a centralized setup, but I'm still not convinced it's better that biodiesel or ethanol. Photosynthesis is very inefficient, so there is a lot of room for improvement. But plants are like self building robots and they store the output in grains that are easy to transport.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- __MatrixMan__ 1y ago
  One thing that cheap solar panels can't do is produce feedstock for a 3d printer. The effective wattage of something that prevents the need to ship something from the other side of the planet could be quite high even if it's actual wattage is low. That's not to say that we're there yet. Specialists in other countries still make a much better widget than the robot in my closet and they will for a while. But it's a step.
chr1 1y ago
Perovskite is not durable though, and that's the main reason it is still not used in solar cells.
- hfactor5 1y ago
  [dead]

Mimicking photosynthesis at this level, using durable inorganic materials like copper and perovskite, feels like one of those "quiet breakthroughs" that could end up being a game-changer if scaled up

lukan 1y ago

In what way? Energy production? I believe there are quite some breakthrougs required for this to compete with cheap solar panels.

ozim 1y ago
From the article: Researchers built a perovskite and copper-based device that converts carbon dioxide into C2 products – precursory chemicals of innumerable products in our everyday lives, from plastic polymers to jet fuel.
- 9dev 1y ago
  Converting CO2 on its own seems like a useful thing, don’t you think?
  - myrmidon 1y ago
    Not necessarily. The problem is the somewhat low atmospheric CO2 concentration; this is why all the "lets just pollute now and remove the CO2 from the atmosphere with some futuristic tech!" approaches are also kinda doomed, because even if you had some workable process that did not cause excessive costs by itself (like this one possibly), you still need to process millions of cubic meters of air, every year, just to compensate for a single (!!) car.
    - leereeves 1y ago
      That sounds like a lot, but a million cubic meters is only a cube 100 meters on each side. So it's on the order of the air in a football stadium. A 1200 CFM home air conditioning system moves roughly 20 million cubic meters per year.
      - myrmidon 1y ago
        Sure. But thats still very much a lower bound, and it makes a bunch of idealizing assumptions that are hopelessly overoptimistic (assuming your intake gets the full 400ppm of CO2, and you manage to extract all of it in one go). Even from those numbers, you already get up to a football stadium of processed air per hour for every small town. For a big city, you need to process that football stadium worth of air every second. Building infrastructure of that magnitude is a major commitment, and if most nations can not be arsed to replace a small number of fossil power plants per country, I honestly don't see us building large air processing plants in every single town in a timely manner (that are extremely likely to be less profitable than replacing the power plants).
        themaninthedark 1y ago
        What is the size of these process units? Can it be coupled with current air processes? Every house, office building and factory has air handling units. Factories and other industrial sites also use compressors.
        teamonkey 1y ago
        Right now they’re a fantasy so they can be as large or small as your imagination permits.
        gus_massa 1y ago
        It converts CO2 and H2O into ethane and ethylene, oversimplifying the output is natural gas. What do you do with the natural gas? You can put it in pipes and send it to a central location, but you need pumps and the pipes are a nightmare. You can store it in a local tank but you need a pump again, and burn it but it release the CO2 again. Using a solar panel and a battery is easier and more efficient. (Do they need also some water pipes?) For a distributed production, solar panels are much better. Pipes and pumps may work in a centralized setup, but I'm still not convinced it's better that biodiesel or ethanol. Photosynthesis is very inefficient, so there is a lot of room for improvement. But plants are like self building robots and they store the output in grains that are easy to transport.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
__MatrixMan__ 1y ago
One thing that cheap solar panels can't do is produce feedstock for a 3d printer. The effective wattage of something that prevents the need to ship something from the other side of the planet could be quite high even if it's actual wattage is low. That's not to say that we're there yet. Specialists in other countries still make a much better widget than the robot in my closet and they will for a while. But it's a step.

chr1 1y ago

Perovskite is not durable though, and that's the main reason it is still not used in solar cells.

hfactor5 1y ago
[dead]