Light harvesting for decarbonization through artificial and natural photosynthesis
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Photosynthesis offers promise in extending the reach of solar energy from the power sector further into the heating and transportation sectors while simultaneously enabling carbon sequestration on a global scale. While artificial photosynthesis (APS) might be used to provide sustainable fuels and chemicals, the field has demonstrated relatively slow progress over its ~80-year history. Despite select systems surpassing 10% energy efficiency, APS processes remain too costly to address our energy and material needs on any meaningful scale. Meanwhile natural photosynthesis (NPS) in inherently inefficient. Though the green revolution more than doubled the yields of essential grains, crops typically remain limited to energy conversion efficiencies below 1%. Given the urgency of today's climate crisis, these trajectories are unacceptable. The field of APS, especially photocatalysis, needs clearer direction to drive forward progress in material and system development. In parallel, attempts to improve NPS would benefit from innovative, scalable ideas. In this work, problems associated with experimental and reporting conventions in the field of photocatalysis are revealed that hinder the forward progress of photocatalytic material development. Common normalization conventions are seen to artificially inflate the apparent performance of multi-component systems by up to ~100%, and experimental instabilities result in up to ~400% variation in apparent performance for select multi-phase systems. A normalization technique and experimental guidelines are provided to address these issues. In the context of NPS, a novel approach to enhancing energy efficiency is introduced, employing luminescent materials to target the vast underutilization of available sunlight by plants. The approach is three-fold: spectral redistribution of sunlight to drive photosynthesis deeper within canopies; short-term temporal redistribution to smooth over light fluctuations; and long-term temporal redistribution to extend daylight hours. To enable temporal redistribution, a luminescence concentrating device is presented, with prototypes demonstrating peak intensities of ~1 W/m2, a nearly 30× increase over the raw material and approaching intensities relevant to photosynthesis. It is far from clear what the respective roles of APS and NPS will be in our future energy and environment landscapes. It is clear, however, that existing technologies are insufficient within political, economic, and social constraints. The trajectory of APS needs to be critically reexamined, efforts focused, and innovation in photosynthesis—artificial and natural—promoted.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2020; ©2020 |
| Publication date | 2020; 2020 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Kunz, Larissa Yvonne |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Cargnello, Matteo |
| Degree supervisor | Majumdar, Arunava |
| Thesis advisor | Cargnello, Matteo |
| Thesis advisor | Majumdar, Arunava |
| Thesis advisor | Dionne, Jennifer Anne |
| Degree committee member | Dionne, Jennifer Anne |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Chemical Engineering. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Larissa Yvonne Kunz. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Chemical Engineering. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2020. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2020 by Larissa Yvonne Kunz
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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