Synthesis of Sugar and fixation of CO2 through Artificial Photosynthesis driving by Hydrogen or Electricity

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel artificial photosynthesis process that uses hydrogen or electricity to regenerate NADH, significantly improving sugar synthesis efficiency from CO2 and potentially enabling large-scale energy production.

Contribution

It introduces nine dark reaction pathways driven by NADH from hydrogen or electricity, enhancing efficiency and scalability of artificial photosynthesis for sugar production.

Findings

Total efficiency of artificial photosynthesis can reach 30%.

Using formaldehyde synthesis from CO2 and H2 simplifies large-scale production.

Sugar can be efficiently converted to hydrogen as an energy carrier.

Abstract

The overall process of photosynthesis consists of two main phases, the so-called light and dark eactions: light energy is absorbed by chlorophyll molecules and transferred to regenerate NADH and ATP, then drive Calvin-Benson cycle to synthesize sugar. In order to synthesize sugar through artificial photosynthesis, one of the key is to regenerate ATP economically and improve the efficiency of dark reactions. Here 9 kinds of dark reaction pathways are proposed, which only NADH is regenearated from hydrogen or electricity for driving, the efficiency of dark reactions is improved, combined with solar photovoltaic or solar hydrogen technology, the total efficiency of artificial photosynthesis can reach 30%, several ten times more than natural photosynthesis. One of them, to use chemical synthesis of formaldehyde from CO2 and H2, no NADH and ATP is need, to synthesize sugar efficiently through 9 enzymes, so it will be easier to produce in large scale, and the sugar will be a good energy carrier as the sugar can be efficiently converted to energy carrier hydrogen through enzymes.