I recently saw a video by Gooferking Science on youtube extracting Chlorophyll from plants.
Which is, if I`m right, the driving force behind photosynthesis.
This got me wondering, back in biology class when you`d look at a plant cell you would see just tiny dots of chlorophyll in a cell, without anything
else, so could you just put a chlorophyll solution in sunlight, and would it produce energy?
Would it heat up? Would it generate electricity? I am really curious at this point and I couldnt find the answer.
I want to try it at some point, I know any efficiency will be low, but hey, just for fun!
Thanks!j_sum1 - 1-3-2016 at 15:05
More a biology question than a chemistry question.
Firstly, there are two chlorophylls -- Chlorophyll A and chlorophyll B. I am not sure that they have the exact same function.
Secondly there are two main steps in the conversion of CO2 and H2O to glucose -- the so-called light reaction and the dark reaction. I forget the
details but you could look them up. It is the light reaction that is dependent on chlorophyll. Thirdly, I am pretty certain that the reaction
mechanism is not yet fully understood. Fourthly, this is not the most likely candidate we have for harnessing solar energy. For the foreseeable
future, plants will do it better than us. And the energy produced is on the form of a sugar -- which, although useful, is probably not our preferred
form for non-biological applications. You are not going to get an electric current out of chlorophyll.aga - 1-3-2016 at 15:41
Perhaps post a link to the video you saw ...Metacelsus - 1-3-2016 at 18:01
It would take a great deal of biomolecular engineering, but I think there is potential (HA) in producing an artificial membrane containing
photosystems I and II. These would create a charge difference between the two sides of the membrane like they do between the chloroplast stroma and
the thykaloid lumen. If the membrane was engineered to lack ATP synthase proteins (which harvest the energy in the charge imbalance in plants) it
might be possible to get electric current out of it.
Jstuyfzand - 8-3-2016 at 05:44
Seems like I`ve been diving in the deep and thinking too easy of a very complicated process.
Thanks for the replies, this thread can be locked!
