Scientists find new way to convert solar power into fuel

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New Delhi : It is known to all that solar power is an efficient alternative to all the non-renewable resources. Scientists, in the quest to dig out more, have come with new ways to turn sunlight into fuel. The discovery has been made after researchers successfully split water into hydrogen and oxygen by altering the photosynthetic machinery in plants.

Photosynthesis is the process in which plants use to convert sunlight into energy. Oxygen is produced as a by-product of photosynthesis when the water absorbed by plants is 'split'. It is one of the most important reactions on the planet because it is the source of nearly all of the world's oxygen. Hydrogen which is produced when the water is split could potentially be a green and unlimited source of renewable energy.

Well, in this new study, the researchers have used semi-artificial photosynthesis to explore new ways to produce and store solar energy. They used natural sunlight to convert water into hydrogen and oxygen using a mixture of biological components and manmade technologies. 

Now they believe that their findings can bring revolutionary changes in the field of renewable energy production. The method used by them also managed to absorb more solar light than natural photosynthesis.

Katarzyna Soko, one of the researchers, said, "Natural photosynthesis is not efficient because it has evolved merely to survive so it makes the bare minimum amount of energy needed - around 1-2 per cent of what it could potentially convert and store."

The research is a part of the developing field of semi-artificial photosynthesis which aims to overcome the boundaries of fully artificial photosynthesis by using enzymes to create the desired reaction.

The team of researchers not only improved on the amount of energy produced and stored, they managed to reactivate a process in the algae that has been dormant for millennia.

"Hydrogenase is an enzyme present in algae that is capable of reducing protons into hydrogen. During evolution this process has been deactivated because it wasn't necessary for survival but we successfully managed to bypass the inactivity to achieve the reaction we wanted - splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen," Soko explained.

Researchers feel that the approach could be used to develop more solar energy technology for extraction of fuel in near future. 

The fruitful research has been published in Nature Energy journal.