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| Thu, 11th Jun 2020 17:01:00 |
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New Solar Breakthrough Turns Carbon Dioxide Into Fuel |
Plants and their ingenious way of turning light and air into fuel have been an inspiration for many scientists. Now, photosynthesis has made the basis for a possible solution to our carbon dioxide problem. Researchers from the Swedish Linköping University have found a way to use solar power to convert carbon dioxide into other chemicals for use as a fuel. They did this by devising what they called a photoelectrode covered in a layer of graphene—the much-hyped material that is basically a single layer of carbon atoms—which captures solar energy and creates charge carriers. Next, they convert carbon dioxide and water into methane, carbon monoxide, and formic acid.
This is the latest sign that a drive is underway to find ways to utilize the carbon dioxide that is the target of so many environmental initiatives and even the Paris Agreement itself. And this drive is gathering pace, with breakthroughs likely to keep coming.
Earlier this year, for example, the National Renewable Energy Lab and the University of Southern California announced they had made a new sort of catalyst that could make hydrogenation—a process than can turn carbon dioxide into hydrocarbons—cheaper.
Their catalyst utilized nanotechnology to add nanoparticles of molybdenum carbide—a compound featuring a metal and carbon that has an extensive range of applications, among them the conversion of carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide to be used in chemicals production, and into hydrocarbons.
Cost is an essential consideration in all projects seeking to make use of the carbon dioxide that we release in the atmosphere instead of just leaving it there and worrying about it. Carbon capture technology is notoriously expensive, for example, and many believe it would never become affordable enough to make sense as a large-scale solution to the world's emissions problem. But some technologies are that expensive, it seems.
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