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From: andy@istbt.UUCP (Andy Greener)
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Re: Very Cheap Solar Cells
Message-ID: <173@istbt.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 17-Sep-84 08:11:18 EDT
Article-I.D.: istbt.173
Posted: Mon Sep 17 08:11:18 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 31-Aug-84 02:58:15 EDT
References: <12588@sri-arpa.UUCP>, <998@shark.UUCP>
Organization: Imperial Software Technology, London, England
Lines: 39

[everyone else seems to be wary...]

hutch@shark.UUCP writes:
> Has anyone looked into organic solar collection?  Plants do a real
> fine job of collecting and storing solar energy;  does anyone know
> how efficient they are (not 100% by any means, since they are usually
> sensitive in a fairly narrow bandwidth of yellow-green) ??
> 
> An organic compound engineered to translate sunlight into ATP and
> another that turned ATP into electricity would be an interesting
> way to power a car. . .

What colour are your plants in Oregon Hutch? Ours are green and yellow
because they DO NOT absorb green and yellow light. You must have an interesting
garden!

The majority of the spectrum is absorbed except those wavelengths around
550 nm (green), 600 nm and 640 nm (yellow). However the efficiency is not
great (I'm not sure of the exact figure).

Photosynthesis is a two-stage process; the light stage is the photo-chemical
reaction with sunlight that splits water and provides the free hydrogen
for the second (dark) stage to turn into carbohydrates. The first stage
produces ATP anyway to power the second stage (nature did the engineering
already!).

The light stage produces faster than the dark stage can cope with so periods
of darkness are actually beneficial to the process.

However, a problem with the utilisation of this process is its extreme
sensitivity to temperature and the fact that because enzymes are involved
any temperatures above about 40 Centigrade will kill it due to protein
denaturing.

	Andy Greener		Imperial Software Technology
				London, England

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