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Altered Organism Triples Solar Cell Efficiency
An anonymous reader writes "By harnessing the shells of living organisms in the sea, microscopic algae called diatoms, engineers have tripled the efficiency of experimental dye-sensitized solar cells. The diatoms were fed a diet of titanium dioxide, the main ingredient for thin film solar cells, instead of their usual meal which is silica (silicon dioxide). As a result, their shells became photovoltaic when coated with dyes. The result is a thin-film dye-sensitized solar cell that is three times more efficient than those without the diatoms."
Neat. When can I buy them for my house?
So does this mean we now have to call them dye-atoms?
Don't bother throwing things...I've already taken cover.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
So, with the "breakthrough" a few months ago that three different dyes in a cell could capture 40% of light from the sun, does that make this more efficient than coal?
Could the ecomentalists finally have something to cheer about?!
xkcdsw: the unofficial archive of Making xkcd Slightly Worse
From toothpaste to DE Filters to solar cells.
I love nature - if mankind paid more attention to it we'd be so much more advanced than we are currently.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Nasty humans exploiting those defenseless unicellular creatures!
Diatoms that generate electricity... great! Who's in charge of soldering the leads to them so we can harness it ?
titanium dioxide is the main pigment base in modern (but not pre-70's) white paint. While titanium is not a particularly cheap metal, paint chips are something that is actually hard to get rid of. I wonder if they could be fed on waste drywall stripped from homes. that's basically paint, paper, and gypsum.
I get e-mails like that all day... this isn't news!
Of course diatoms are going to make better solar cells. I mean just look at the name, diatom is greek for two atoms. There's twice as many atoms there, so you'd guess they would make at least twice as good solar cells.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
Oh noes, poor diatoms.
Gimme a break; even the PETA retards aren't that rabid.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
. . . from whacking at straw men?
Triple efficiency of what? I was only able to find this paragraph that put some numbers.
Dye-sensitized solar cells are favored as a thin-film material because they work in low-light conditions and are fabricated with environmentally benign materials compared to silicon solar cells. However, silicon cells have more than twice the efficiency, as much as 20 percent compared to less than 10 percent for dye-sensitized solar cells.
So Are we talking about 3x 20%? One could only wish. I think they mean 3x 10%, so 30% efficency, which is only 50% better than silicon solar cell. I guess that's still a big improvement.
FTFA: However, silicon cells have more than twice the efficiency, as much as 20 percent compared to less than 10 percent for dye-sensitized solar cells.
Looks more like 30% efficiency to me.
I don't know why they can't just tell you the percentage up front!
Do the diatoms die from shock?
Lousy headline here. They haven't tripled the efficiency of the already best solar cells out there, but just some over variant that wasn't so very efficient to start with.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Not for diatoms, maybe, but for nano-sea-kittens?
Not a sentence!
You sure about that? http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Music/04/10/peta.pet.shop.boys/index.html
Apparently we once were... ever heard of Atlantis?
"even the PETA retards aren't that rabid"
Wanna bet? :-p
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
I wonder what effect this will have on evolutionary processes in the diatoms.
How will they respond to the titanium dioxide in an evolutionary context?
Maybe they can do the same with humans, and we no longer need to eat: just hang out in the sun. My wife keeps telling me that I'm as lazy as a plant anyhow. Might as well go all the way.
Table-ized A.I.
I'm sorry, but three times something you'll never have is still zero.
Did anyone else notice that the article didn't bother to compare the solar cells with, I don't know, other solar cells? They didn't talk about efficiency compared to any other existing method of making solar cells, except for the exact same methodology minus the diatoms.
Sounds like they are "fishing" for some more funding. Oh yes I can.
FTA: "After removing the organic material from the shells, leaving behind the diatom's nanoscale skeletons composed of titanium dioxide, the researchers mixed the material in a dye."
It is an organic production method, but the final product is not organic. Still valid questions perhaps, but not because it's organic.
Zing! Best "come"-back ever.
Sigh..with each post my maturity level decreases by 1.
I know what you mean... the internet has ruined me forever.
First thing I thought was "Altered Beast".
RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE! And seriously, if you can be risen from the grave surely you make me better then a weasly wimp that takes 2 hits to knock a wobbly zombie head off before I get my POWER UP water bubbles.
ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ONE! Just brushing up for my next big invention: Ethernet over Voice (EoV)
Dr. Alexander Shulgin talks about something similar, making a mushroom take care of his work.
However there is a very interesting study that took place in Leipzig about 15 years ago. Jochen Gartz, a mushroom explorer whom I know quite well, has done some fascinating studies with Psilocybe species by raising them on solid media containing strange tryptamines that are alien to the mushroom. Apparently the enzymes that are responsible for the 4-hydroxy group of psilocin are indifferent to what it is they choose to 4-hydroxylate. He has taken things like DPT or DIPT and put them in the growth media and the fruiting bodies that came out contain 4-hydroxy-DPT or 4-hydroxy-DIPT instead of psilocin.
That could have been a pretty good zinger, but it would have made more sense if the poster had actually mentioned sex rather than orgasm.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Between this, that kid who had some amazing breakthrough with no help from his parents and others, honest, and all the other breakthroughs we've had, solar efficiency has been boosted over 100 fold in the past decade.
Why has none of it come to fruition?
Could it be that bullshit headlines and shoddy research yields more research funds?
Because:
"This gives cells with up to 20 percent efficiency" don't give them as much money when other technologies gives up to 40% as "twice as much."
Three times sounds wrong, unless it's over 20 percent now and much less than 10 percent earlier, your 30% figure don't make sense either.
next up from stoned science: "dude, did you ever look at your hand, no, i mean really look at it?: curing phantom limb symptoms by really looking at your hand"
Y'must be high. If your hand is completely there, you'd not have a problem with it being nonexistent and itchy, would ya?
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
HAH, I'm a Portland State student, and a medical marijuana patient. Let me fill you in on something, you can cure phantom limb by looking at your REAL hand while stoned, and placing it in the mirror while pretending its your phantom limb.
Seriously,
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind.html
I must say for the record, 'all hail marijuana science'.
It's not the efficiency that counts so much as the cost, if they can make the total cost [of solar power] less than that of coal, then it will be viable, ... Or we could just use nuclear like sensible people until science perfects fusion or solar.
yeah, you're totally right, solar power isn't already more cost efficient than the loss of our entire freaking planet.
we should probably just all start burning everything--our homes and our children, cause there's nothing better for us to do than speed up the process.
sit boo boo, sit.
DON'T CAPITALIZE! CO-OPERATE! AND FREE EVERYTHING!
30 seconds of googling reports that dye cells currently produce around 6-10%. If you can triple that, it makes a really good solar cell. If you can do that and keep costs low, it makes a great solar cell.
I'm sure the harvesting of innocent diatoms for their shells will offend someone. Maybe the right to life folks as well, and if these are naked diatoms, the people who want clothes on cats and dogs, as well.
There is no end to stupidity, therefore the Universe must be infinite.
... but diatoms are *Not* animals.
They are eukaryote, but not animals. Plus, PETA doesn't really care about microscopic animals --- they care about the animals you would learn about in a book for children.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromalveolata
Actually, I'd be more likely to expect Monsanto to add that requirement....and an expensive way to get around it.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
You sound like you have a chip on your shoulder about "organic", which is a label intended to let interested consumers know that food is relatively naturally produced.
GM does not meet that definition for good reason. Your GM food has seen a few generations of testing... not thousands. It is not organic, whether or not we think it's harmless at this time. Organic does and should remain a very strict bar to reach.
If you want a new label for GM only, but OTHERWISE natural, lobby for it. "Pesticide Free" maybe.
but fuck you for even insinuating GM should be included in the "organic" family of foods. or even the trolling that how a farm generates POWER would have any effect whatsoever on its organic rating. Nobody says gm is the same as pesticides or antibiotics (except, of course the GM that creates such compounds like BT corn and its bug killing bacteria) but that doesn't make it natural, which is what organic consumers are looking for. Not "deemed safe by a testing organization" but instead "deemed safe by thousands of years of consumption".
If you don't care about eating organic, don't eat organic. But don't screw with people who do care about not being guinea pigs for whatever biotech Monsanto has declared safe this week, or paid large amounts of money to have FDA employees who may or may not ever get jobs at Monsanto declare safe over a few years of reading Monsanto reports and maybe, if we're lucky, reading something Monsanto didn't point them at. Maybe the stuff really is safe: great. Too bad for all those people paying all that money for unnecessarily expense food, eh? But Maybe, just Maybe, all the testing isn't quite exhaustive or conclusive all by itself, eh?
and before you even start, only about half of my diet is organic, at best. I'm hardly a zealot. I just acknowledge the limits of testing and don't begrudge anyone the right to be FULLY INFORMED about the food they choose to put in their bodies.
To anyone with even a college-level understanding of science, that is not a good reason... Thousands of generations may be required to determine long-term survivability of the species, but they are just as edible. Far more "dangerous" things can be done by simply mixing various organic foods into a meal (or a food product) after slaughter/harvesting, than can happen in a living organism.
Why don't you lobby instead for non-GM to be a separate certification? That would make far more sense... People opposed to GM, for whatever reason, will then be able to buy non-GM foods, but if they don't care for pesticides or anti-biotics, they don't have to pay extra for that?
Oh! So that is the high-minded discourse one gets for doubting the dogma. Thank you very much...
I do care. But I don't want anti-business fear-mongering to affect the meaning of what "organic" means. Things like traces of anti-biotics and pesticides may well be harmful. Genetic modifications can not.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
CAN NOT be hamful? really? that's quite a dogmatic statement, for one who "doubts dogma". So plants engineered to KILL THINGS... that has no effect whatsoever on a person that eats it? it's exactly the same? That would be an amazing thing, if true. However, it's a ridiculous statement: you can't know that for all current and future GM technology. THAT is what organic means: we are not guessing. I'm a little stunned you could even pretend there could be no effects. You could GM a plant specifically to kill people, so your statement is obviously wrong. And if you are interested in science, you should realize you could not make such definite statements such as "can not" be harmful. All you can say is "doesn't seem to be harmful so far". Any time you change something significantly you introduce the possibility of unintended consequences.
the World Health Organization is on my side as well,
http://www.who.int/foodsafety/publications/biotech/20questions/en/
Q8. Are GM foods safe?
Different GM organisms include different genes inserted in different ways. This means that individual GM foods and their safety should be assessed on a case-by-case basis and that it is not possible to make general statements on the safety of all GM foods.
GM foods currently available on the international market have passed risk assessments and are not likely to present risks for human health. In addition, no effects on human health have been shown as a result of the consumption of such foods by the general population in the countries where they have been approved. Continuous use of risk assessments based on the Codex principles and, where appropriate, including post market monitoring, should form the basis for evaluating the safety of GM foods.
Your thousands of generations may be well and good in a lab, but I mean thousands of human generations, not plant generations. I don't care how many plants people peer at in a lab. I care how many people have grown old eating the stuff.
Organic is a specific term because that is what organic consumers want. Seriously: fuck you for even mentioning watering it down, it's already hard enough to stop Walmart and other big boys from co-opting the term to make it meaningless. That would only serve to mislead consumers who don't wish to be full time participants in science experiments. and consumers of natural foods want to know if it's GM, for the most part, like it or not, and it should be our right to make that decision for ourselves.