ABSTRACT
The remarkable energy strategy of nature has not only provided a sustainable basis for survival of living beings in nearly all climatic zones of our earth, it has even optimized our ecosystem out of an entirely hostile primitive environment. The discipline of energy bionics tries to understand the principles involved and to adapt them for the bene‚t of mankind using technically practical materials and processes. Can the future energy strategy of an industrialized world function as a high-technological continuation of natural evolution of biological energy technology? It turns out that the natural strategy of splitting
CONTENTS
8.1 Implementing Energy Strategies: What We Know ....................................................... 416 8.2 Our Energy Reality ............................................................................................................ 418 8.3 Bionics Strategy and What Technology Has Already Learned from Nature ........... 419 8.4 What Is the Energy Strategy of Nature? .........................................................................422 8.5 Let Us Continue Evolution on a High-Technological Level .........................................423 8.6 Wave Energy as a Start into Economic Hydrogen Production....................................426 8.7 Economy of Hydrogen from High-Wave Ocean Regions ............................................430 8.8 Role of Biomass as Energy Carrier .................................................................................. 431 8.9 Need for Arti‚cial Carbon Dioxide Fixation ................................................................. 432 8.10 Archaic Bacteria: The Search for the Seeds for a Futuristic Agriculture ................... 432 8.11 Elements of a Bio-Analogue Fuel Economy ...................................................................435 8.12 Nature as an Example for Advanced Energy Catalysis ............................................... 437 8.13 Photovoltaic Nanocells of Plants: The Advantage of Kinetic Charge
Separation................................................................................................................... 439 8.14 Photocatalytic Water Splitting .........................................................................................442 8.15 Handling Water within a Bionic Energy Economy ......................................................445 8.16 Solar Energy and Tensile Water .......................................................................................446 8.17 Household and Industrial Waste: With Hydrogen Back to Raw Materials ..............449 8.18 Energy Materials and Sustainability ..............................................................................449 8.19 Nature’s Ionic Electricity-Generation Technology ........................................................450 8.20 Energy Bionics: A Never-Ending Lesson ....................................................................... 451 8.21 Bionic Energy Strategy Compared with Other Visions ...............................................454 8.22 Summary and Discussion ................................................................................................ 457 References .....................................................................................................................................460
water with solar light for hydrogen, which is then attached to carbon-carrying molecules is a demanding technology but highly practical. It provides the basis for a sustainable fuel and material technology that mankind could gradually approach using wave-, wind-, and photovoltaic energy for hydrogen production and gasi‚ed biomass as carbon carriers. Additional scienti‚c challenges in relation to energy, which man has to tackle, include photocatalytic water splitting, solar cells of nanomaterials based on kinetic charge separation, solar-powered water technology based on water cohesion, catalysis of multielectron transfer for fuel generation, as well as numerous mechanisms for energy storage, con‚nement, and conservation. Advanced nanomaterial technology can provide many advantages for energy applications as well. On the long term, there is no alternative to arti‚cial carbon dioxide ‚xation. It is suggested to take advantage of sul‚de-oxidizing bacteria, supplied by a solar generated sul‚de energy source, for an arti‚cial biomass industry similar to deep-sea ecosystems. Chemical industry must also learn to combine carbon dioxide with hydrogen. A signi‚cant advantage of the projected bionic energy strategy is that our fuel-producing and fuel-supplying industry can essentially remain the same while the fuel becomes sustainable.
