Thermodynamic efficiency of the photosynthesis in plant cell

Biomimetic utilization of solar energy

“…In particular, the experimentally measured efficiency of solar energy conversion (based on the overall light flux) is as high as 6% for chlorella and even lower for other photosynthetics. 37 Unusually high values of the efficiency of photosynthesis occasionally reported in the literature (for example, 71%) 38 suggest that the authors forget that photosynthesis is a quantum process. In artificial molecular transducers, mobilization of one electron does not necessarily require spending two photons, as in chloroplasts; in addition, photophosphorylation of ADP, which also requires certain energy inputs, is unnecessary, etc.…”

Entropy production in oscillatory processes during photosynthesis

“…[13][14][15] The thermodynamic efficiency of the photosynthetic process has been analysed by several authors, with calculated magnitude varying depending on the available information and the way that information is interpreted. [16][17][18][19][20] Based on thermochemical data such as the standard Gibbs free energies of formation, efficiency is estimated to be between 20% and 99%, depending on whether the entire process is analysed or just one of the steps, such as light absorption. If the energy efficiency of a process is evaluated by taking the maximum efficiency of a reversible process as a criterion of the second law of thermodynamics, it follows that the magnitude of the generated entropy is directly related to the real efficiency of irreversible processes.…”