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Edmonton Startup’s Simulated Sunlight Aims To Help Producers Grow More Food With Less Energy
This “Engineered Sunlight™” is at the heart of a food security revolution aimed at finding ways to produce more food with less energy, often in extreme settings
MAY 17, 2021
Sunlight, water and nutrients, in varying degrees depending on the plant, are the foundation of all plant life, but if you want to see them really grow, one University of Alberta graduate says threaten them with a little shade.
Michael Taschuk
Michael Taschuk, the founder of G2V Optics, explained plants growing in a field are always competing with each other for sunlight, so if a neighbour starts growing over them, plants can actually “see” this optically.
“There’s a change in the quality of the red light that they observe, so they will grow taller and they will grow bigger,” said Taschuk.
“That’s what we do with our lighting—we can mimic that light that they would interpret as shading so that they grow bigger.”
This “Engineered Sunlight™” is at the heart of a food security revolution aimed at finding ways to produce more food with less energy, often in extreme settings.
And not unlike the plants they grow, it is a crowded field of scientists hunting for the next breakthrough.
Innovation rooted in U of A research
That’s why Taschuk and his G2V team have never strayed very far from their U of A roots.
Taschuk, who spent 20 years moving from undergrad to PhD being trained as an optics and electronics researcher, previously collaborated with engineering professor Mike Brett and chemistry professor Jillian Buriak, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Nanomaterials for Energy, to build organic photovoltaic devices.
“Through the course of that collaboration, it became clear that there was an opportunity as LEDs developed to mimic sunlight really precisely, and then make a really good test instrument for the work that Jillian and her group were doing around solar cells,” said Taschuk.
“There are colours beyond what humans can see, both in the ultraviolet and into the infrared, which solar cells and plants care about.”
More recently, Taschuk joined forces with R. Glen Uhrig, a plant functional genomics professor in the Faculty of Science, who is studying the interaction of plants and light.
And like the first collaboration that helped launch G2V, Uhrig made an immediate impact.
“Glen took a look at our lights and found a mechanism to decrease the energy costs by 30 per cent,” said Taschuk. “Plants grow 30 per cent better if you get the lighting right.
“This is just game-changing for vertical farms, or indoor farming under controlled environment agriculture, as you can imagine.
“Without any additional inputs, we were getting 30 per cent more plant yield.”
Now, G2V Optics and the Uhrig Lab have been awarded a joint Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada Alliance grant and an Alberta Innovates Campus Alberta Small Business Engagement grant totalling $720,000 over two years to research light’s impact on the genetic response and phenotype of horticulturally relevant plants.
University of Alberta Release. This material comes from the originating organization and may be of a point-in-time nature, edited for clarity, style and length. View in full here.
Tags:Agriculture, breakthrough, business, Canada, Engineering, environment, genomics, innovation, Professor, research, Scientists, security, Small Business, ultraviolet, university, University of Alberta
Breakthrough In Artificial Photosynthesis Lets Scientists Store The Sun's Energy As Fuel
Plants have a seemingly effortless skill – turning sunlight into energy – and scientists have been working to artificially emulate this photosynthesis process
29 AUGUST 2020
Plants have a seemingly effortless skill – turning sunlight into energy – and scientists have been working to artificially emulate this photosynthesis process. The ultimate benefits for renewable energy could be huge – and a new approach based on 'photosheets' could be the most promising attempt we've seen so far.
The new device takes CO2, water, and sunlight as its ingredients, and then produces oxygen and formic acid that can be stored as fuel. The acid can either be used directly or converted into hydrogen – another potentially clean energy fuel.
Key to the innovation is the photosheet - or photocatalyst sheet - which uses special semiconductor powders that enable electron interactions and oxidation to occur when sunlight hits the sheet in water, with the help of a cobalt-based catalyst.
No additional components are required for the reaction to occur, and it's fully self-powered.
"We were surprised how well it worked in terms of its selectivity – it produced almost no by-products," says chemist Qian Wang, from the University of Cambridge in the UK.
"Sometimes things don't work as well as you expected, but this was a rare case where it actually worked better."
The device in action. (University of Cambridge)
While the prototype photosheet only measures 20 square centimetres (3 square inches), the scientists who invented it say it should be relatively easy to scale up without incurring huge costs.
Ultimately, they think these sheets could be produced in large arrays, similar to those on solar farms. What's more, the resulting formic acid can be stored in a solution, and from there converted into different types of fuel as needed.
It achieves something that isn't always guaranteed in conversion systems like this – a clean and efficient process without any unwanted by-products. Any extra waste produced has to be dealt with, which can negate the positive effects of the initial reaction.
"It's been difficult to achieve artificial photosynthesis with a high degree of selectivity so that you're converting as much of the sunlight as possible into the fuel you want, rather than be left with a lot of waste," says Wang.
A team from the same lab was also responsible for developing an 'artificial leaf' material in 2019. While the new photosheet behaves in a similar way, it's more robust and easier to scale up – and it produces fuel that's more straightforward to store, too (last year's system created syngas).
That doesn't mean the new photosheet is ready to go commercial just yet: The researchers need to make the process a lot more efficient first; they are also experimenting with different catalysts that may be able to produce different solar fuels.
The need for a full transition to clean energy is more urgent than ever, but we're encouraged by how many projects are in the pipeline. However, as is the case with this new process, figuring out the science is just the start of producing a fuel that will work practically.
"Storage of gaseous fuels and separation of by-products can be complicated – we want to get to the point where we can cleanly produce a liquid fuel that can also be easily stored and transported," says chemist Erwin Reisner, from the University of Cambridge.
"We hope this technology will pave the way toward sustainable and practical solar fuel production."
The research has been published in Nature Energy.