Naked Science Forum
General Science => General Science => Topic started by: skoorb on 23/03/2016 18:23:50
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Basically I am wondering if it is possible to convert light into electrical energy, and I'm not talking about solar energy. I'm talking about any form of light. If so, how?
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I know that it is possible to convert the energy from heat to electrical energy, but I don't know anything about the conversion of light energy to electrical energy besides the use of photovoltaic panels to convert solar energy.
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Basically I am wondering if it is possible to convert light into electrical energy, and I'm not talking about solar energy. I'm talking about any form of light. If so, how?
Yes its very possible. I know from experience that the little garden solar lights, will charge from fire light, they will even charge off each other. If you put one LED solar light on top of one another, the LED light will charge the battery, of the solar light below.
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The lights have a light senor that turns them off, and on. The lower light will charge from the upper and when the upper light goes off the lower one will come on.
All light is a form of radiation, so thats the best why I can think of.
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if it is possible to convert light into electrical energy...any form of light.
Solar cells work well to convert any form of visible light into electricity. Efficiency is around 5-10% for commercial cells.
Light is a form of electromagnetic radiation, and there are many forms of it, including radio waves, microwaves, infra-red, visible, ultraviolet, X-Rays and gamma rays. Different methods will work better for different types of light. But if you can turn it into heat, a thermo-electric generator will turn heat into electricity, or a Stirling Engine can drive a generator (but very inefficiently).
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The trouble with turning heat into electricity is that you also need source of cold, this is no problem in space or on a ship but if you want do it on a vehicle (that has lots of surplus heat) the radiators to do it will waste a lot of the power that you have saved
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If you don't want to use photovoltaics, use plants to capture carbon dioxide from the air and turn it into a combustible fuel by the action of light.