
Artificial Photosynthesis - tempestn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_photosynthesis
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apo
_Water oxidation is a more complex chemical reaction than proton reduction.
..._

 _Without a catalyst (natural or artificial), this reaction is very
endothermic, requiring high temperatures (at least 2500 K)._

Water oxidation may well be endothermic, however, catalysts can not change
that fact. A catalyst can change the activation energy of a reaction (thereby
changing rate of reaction), but can't change a reaction's thermodynamics.

Endothermic reactions can be driven forward by coupling them to one or more
exothermic reactions. Biological systems do this all the time. But even this
does not change the thermodynamics of a reaction, which merely represents the
difference in energy between products and reactants.

Endothermic reactions can also be driven forward by adding energy (in the form
of heat, for example).

~~~
patorjk
If you feel very confident that you're correct, then you should update the
wiki. I'd make it, but I wouldn't feel confident since I don't know much about
this subject matter.

As a random aside, if you search for that sentence on Google, a journal
article [1] appears. It looks like they've copied parts of that wikipedia
section verbatim.

[1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3858868/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3858868/)

~~~
apo
Good find. It does appear to be copied verbatim. The statement is wrong (in
the sense of what it implies) in both the plagiarized article and in
Wikipedia.

