Jerusalem (AFP)
Israeli scientists at Tel Aviv University have successfully produced electricity from plants after several years of work, showing that these plants can be a "clean" source of energy.
This study published in the British scientific journal Energy and Environmental Science, was conducted by Professor Iftach Yacoby, director of the laboratory of renewable energies of the Faculty of Life Sciences of the University of Tel Aviv, in collaboration with the professor Kevin Redding from the University of Arizona (southwestern United States).
It shows that plants have particularly efficient electrical production capacities, based on the photosynthesis process.
According to Mr. Yacoby, all green plants, leaves, grass or algae, contain real "solar panels" and can take a ray of light to transform it into a current of electrons. The challenge remained to extract this current from the plant, according to this professor.
"To connect a device to electricity, just plug it into a power outlet. In the case of a plant, we didn't know where to plug in. We looked for a nano-plug by working on a micro- algae ", into which we injected an enzyme that makes hydrogen using a bio-reactor," he explains.
The micro-algae then developed cells containing the new enzyme and the researchers concluded that it produced good electricity.
At 42, Professor Yacoby said he was convinced that it could be "a new era in agriculture which, after having helped feed people for millennia, will be able to be used to produce 'energy".
"We thought there was potential but we didn't know if it would work and it worked", after almost six years of work, said the scientist.
"There are many things that we can consider doing thanks to the results of our research," he added, as, ultimately, "reducing pollution in the field of transport and heavy industry" .
But, according to him, it will take another 10 to 20 years to achieve this.
© 2020 AFP