Energy from Greenhouse Gas
Food Chain Radio Show #1254
Michael Olson, Author & Urban Farming Agriculturalist
Clean Energy from Greenhouse Gas!
Guest: Matteo Cargnello Professor of Chemical Engineering Stanford University
Let’s begin with photosynthesis, which is God’s gift to planet earth.
As we learned way back when, photosynthesis is the process by which green plants convert radiant energy from the sun and elements from the earth into the stored chemical energy of plant matter. “Photo” means “light,” and “synthesis” means “put together.”
That plant matter then become the energy that fuels most all living things on earth. And that make’s it a pretty clever process, don’t you think?
But wait, there’s more: Plants breathe in that dirty greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, break the bond of carbon and oxygen, and then breathe out some wonderfully clean oxygen. What a deal for us living creatures, don’t you think?
Now think of what we could do if only we were as clever as green plants: Why, we could take that dirty carbon dioxide exhaust coming out of the tailpipe of our car, synthesize it into some clean energy fuel, and put that fuel right back into the gas tank. That would be really clever, don’t you think?
That thought leads us to ask…
Leave a comment below: Can we synthesize photo-synthesis?
