Why cant we use trees to capture solar energy from the sun and then recover the energy from the trees?
Question:
Answer:
Photosynthesis generally takes light, CO2 & water and makes sugars. These sugars are chemically converted in to food, propane, methanol, ethanol, coal, oil, wood and all the other fossil fuels and orgnic compounds on the earth, through natural, geologic, and/or manmade processes. At every step of each process, energy is lost. To gain usable energy, other than in biologic processes, requires burning something, and using the expansion of heated gases to create physical force (motion), or then using physical force to drive a generator to create electrical current.
We do not currently have an effecient method of making electicity using incoming Solar radiation. Current solar cells convert a small percentage of one section of the electromagnetic spectrum into electric current.
Hope this helps.
The trees need what they receive.
We do just that every time we build a campfire.
We do. However, the way we use the energy can be inefficient. When sun light strikes a plant, special chemical in the plant transfers the energy to an electron. By slowly reducing the energy in the electron the plant converts that to chemical energy.
Using the chemical energy plants convert CO2, and water into sugar and oxygen. So, the "solar energy" we started off with gets turned into sugar moelcules, which we eat, for energy, or burn in fires.
The simplest way to harvest this energy is from boiling water to steam (steam engines, etc.). However, the temperature is not very high, so we looked at other methods such as coal and nuclear energy.
We do.
Beside the obvious use of firewood, products such as methanol used to be made primarily from the distillation of wood. Methanol is an alcohol that can be burnt in automotive engines, and is used in the manufacture of biodiesel fuels. Today it is primarily made from natural gas or coal. It was once commonly known as wood alcohol.
During World War II there were nearly a million cars, trucks, buses, and even motorcycles using wood gas (synthesis gas) as fuel.
http://www.woodgas.com/history.htm...
http://www.woodgas.com/synthetic_fuels.h...
We also eat fruits and nuts from trees. This is essentially harnessing the solar energy stored as sugar, protein, and carbohydrates by the trees.
Indirectly, when we burn coal we are using past stores of solar energy that was stored in trees and other plants.
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