Electricity directly from a plant

[Alzo]

I've had this idea in my head for awhile and wasn't able to find a place, until now, to try to discuss it. So this thread will also act as my introduction. As a heads-ups I only know pretty much the high school basics of biology, in fact I'm still in high school and I passed Bio with a C+, so bear with me if I am blatantly saying something impossible, or am contradicting myself, of course tell me though.

So from what I know about photosynthesis, it splits water into oxygen and hydrogen along with carbon dioxide and take the dioxide and turns it into sugar. Now at any point during this, as in, after or before the sugar gets made, is there anyway to to replace the product or turn the product into electricity? And if any of this was possible, would it be more efficient than current solar panel technology? I mean it seems kind of fool proof if it were to work, a growing living power grid, that would heal if damaged and continually grow to meet rising power needs.

Thanks for any help or insight, and I hope to become a regular on these boards.

[mith]

Just capture the excited electrons, you'll get a current.

build the interface and youll get the nobel. obviously its not just wires.

[Alzo]

Thanks for the help, after I did a little searching it seems like a variation of my original idea could work.
With this link right here http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/12886

Now a question I keep thinking is, how much more efficient harness it at the creation of the sugar, rather than the sugar powering a the battery cell in the news article. Of course the former would be harder to engineer, and at this point I'm just thinking out loud, but if anyone has an idea on it, please tell me!

[Cat]

I like your idea better. Using sugar (might be more efficient) is the variation of the cellular respiration process. It would produce CO2. If you come up with the way to use chloroplast photosynthetic model, you would use water and produce oxygen but you would be relying in sunlight. Combining the two would be ideal.

[MrMistery]

By using a mimetic artificial mechanism of photosynthesis you could theoretically produce a box that you put water and a few chemicals in and put it outside while it makes sugar and oxygen. Theoretically...

[MichaelXY]

Just capture the excited electrons, you'll get a current.

build the interface and youll get the nobel. obviously its not just wires.

The interface would be the sticky part (pardon the pun).

I found this link on bacteria that produces electricity from sugar.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=000 ... A84189EEDF