Dynaverse.net
Off Topic => Engineering => Topic started by: Nemesis on April 25, 2010, 05:55:49 pm
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Link to full article (http://web.mit.edu/press/2010/virus-water)
Other researchers have made systems that use electricity, which can be provided by solar panels, to split water molecules, but the new biologically based system skips the intermediate steps and uses sunlight to power the reaction directly. The advance is described in a paper published on April 11 in Nature Nanotechnology.
The team, led by Angela Belcher, the Germeshausen Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Biological Engineering, engineered a common, harmless bacterial virus called M13 so that it would attract and bind with molecules of a catalyst (the team used iridium oxide) and a biological pigment (zinc porphyrins). The viruses became wire-like devices that could very efficiently split the oxygen from water molecules.
In the team’s system, the viruses simply act as a kind of scaffolding, causing the pigments and catalysts to line up with the right kind of spacing to trigger the water-splitting reaction. The role of the pigments is “to act as an antenna to capture the light,” Belcher explains, “and then transfer the energy down the length of the virus, like a wire. The virus is a very efficient harvester of light, with these porphyrins attached.
“We use components people have used before,” she adds, “but we use biology to organize them for us, so you get better efficiency.”
Using the virus to make the system assemble itself improves the efficiency of the oxygen production fourfold, Nam says. The researchers hope to find a similar biologically based system to perform the other half of the process, the production of hydrogen. Currently, the hydrogen atoms from the water get split into their component protons and electrons; a second part of the system, now being developed, would combine these back into hydrogen atoms and molecules. The team is also working to find a more commonplace, less-expensive material for the catalyst, to replace the relatively rare and costly iridium used in this proof-of-concept study.
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Hoi Nemesis,
Neat find.
Makes me think of an article that described the bonds formed between organic and metal ions in muscle (the shellfish) fibres, the iron in the filaments give it the ability to withstand the relentless pounding of the ocean without wearing out, an issue with spider web I believe. I will attempt to locate the article, it has been awhile though,think it was AP tech news 6 months ago?
Take care
drb
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Hoi Nemesis,
Neat find.
Makes me think of an article that described the bonds formed between organic and metal ions in muscle (the shellfish) fibres, the iron in the filaments give it the ability to withstand the relentless pounding of the ocean without wearing out, an issue with spider web I believe. I will attempt to locate the article, it has been awhile though,think it was AP tech news 6 months ago?
Take care
drb
In a similar vein I read a few years ago where they found fibre optics in starfish that were more flexible and efficient than anything man made. They were trying to figure out how they were made at such low temperatures as the man made equivalent required high temperatures. Imagine a starfish engineered to grow long strands for human use.
Bio technology has a lot of potential.