Nick Santos wrote:
> I'm certainly no chemist, but the first thing I thought of was
> photosynthesis except that there you get useful products on all sides of
> the equation rather than having a waste product. I'd also wager that the
> plants are much more efficient than any machine we could make to do the
> same process, but someone who knows better could feel free to correct me.
In terms of absorbing solar radiation and using it to photosynthesise,
plants are not very efficient at all when compared to various solar
schemes for energy collection.
On the plus side though, they build themselves :-)
Their products are also often more useful than pure carbon would be.
So it depends a bit on what one means by "efficiency".
But in answer to the first question, yes all we need is plenty of energy
- which we could get by burning coal. Oops.
James
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