Is the Bionic Leaf the Future of Photosynthesis and CO2 Reduction?

[EnumaElish]

Does this mean we've solved the quantum trick in photosynthesis? Cf. http://m.phys.org/news/2014-01-quantum-mechanics-efficiency-photosynthesis.html

Or is that delegated to the "microbes" in there?

 

[Ygggdrasil]

Even though the researchers market the idea as a bionic "leaf," their method of energy generation has little in common with biological photosynthesis. They use photovoltaic cells instead of the biological photosystems to harvest energy from light:

The device uses solar electricity from a photovoltaic panel to power the chemistry that splits water into oxygen and hydrogen. Microbes within the system then feed on the hydrogen and convert carbon dioxide in the air into alcohol that can be burned as fuel.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/a...s-more-efficient-than-natural-photosynthesis/

Here's a citation to the study being discussed:
Liu et al. 2016 Water splitting–biosynthetic system with CO2 reduction efficiencies exceeding photosynthesis. Science 357: 1210. doi:10.1126/science.aaf5039
Abstract:

Artificial photosynthetic systems can store solar energy and chemically reduce CO2. We developed a hybrid water splitting–biosynthetic system based on a biocompatible Earth-abundant inorganic catalyst system to split water into molecular hydrogen and oxygen (H2 and O2) at low driving voltages. When grown in contact with these catalysts, Ralstonia eutropha consumed the produced H2 to synthesize biomass and fuels or chemical products from low CO2 concentration in the presence of O2. This scalable system has a CO2 reduction energy efficiency of ~50% when producing bacterial biomass and liquid fusel alcohols, scrubbing 180 grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour of electricity. Coupling this hybrid device to existing photovoltaic systems would yield a CO2 reduction energy efficiency of ~10%, exceeding that of natural photosynthetic systems.