A widely-used gas that is currently produced from fossil fuels can instead be made by an ‘artificial leaf’ that uses only sunlight, carbon dioxide and water, and which could eventually be used to develop a sustainable liquid fuel alternative to petrol.
The carbon-neutral device sets a new benchmark in the field of solar fuels, after researchers at the University of Cambridge demonstrated that it can directly produce the gas—called syngas—in a sustainable and simple way.
Rather than running on fossil fuels, the artificial leaf is powered by sunlight, although it still works efficiently on cloudy and overcast days. And unlike the current industrial processes for producing syngas, the leaf does not release any additional carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The results are reported in the journal Nature Materials.
Syngas is currently made from a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, and is used to produce a range of commodities, such as fuels, pharmaceuticals, plastics and fertilisers.
“You may not have heard of syngas itself but every day, you consume products that were created using it. Being able to produce it sustainably would be a critical step in closing the global carbon cycle and establishing a sustainable chemical and fuel industry,” said senior author Professor Erwin Reisner from Cambridge’s Department of Chemistry, who has spent seven years working towards this goal.
The device Reisner and his colleagues produced is inspired by photosynthesis—the natural process by which plants use the energy from sunlight to turn carbon dioxide into food.
On the artificial leaf, two light absorbers, similar to the molecules in plants that harvest sunlight, are combined with a catalyst made from the naturally abundant element cobalt.
When the device is immersed in water, one light absorber uses the catalyst to produce oxygen. The other carries out the chemical reaction that reduces carbon dioxide and water into carbon monoxide and hydrogen, forming the syngas mixture.
HT/Yooper
Too bad that there is not a cheaper, simpler, renewable and more natural source of methane fuel that doesn’t depend on scarse heavy metal and expensive manufacturing…
The hype cycle is a graphical representation of the life cycle stages a technology goes through from conception to maturity and widespread adoption. The hype cycle is a branded tool created by Gartner, an information technology (IT) research and consultancy company.
There are five key phases in a technology’s life cycle.
Innovation Trigger: A potential technology breakthrough kicks things off. Early proof-of-concept stories and media interest trigger significant publicity. Often no usable products exist and commercial viability is unproven.
Peak of Inflated Expectations: Early publicity produces a number of success stories — often accompanied by scores of failures. Some companies take action; many do not.
Trough of Disillusionment: Interest wanes as experiments and implementations fail to deliver. Producers of the technology shake out or fail. Investments continue only if the surviving providers improve their products to the satisfaction of early adopters.
Slope of Enlightenment: More instances of how the technology can benefit the enterprise start to crystallize and become more widely understood. Second- and third-generation products appear from technology providers. More enterprises fund pilots; conservative companies remain cautious.
Plateau of Productivity: Mainstream adoption starts to take off. Criteria for assessing provider viability are more clearly defined. The technology’s broad market applicability and relevance are clearly paying off.
Many technologies fail to emerge from the trough of disillusionment.
They conveniently left out what goes into manufacturing the device. No, it’s not carbon neutral. Construction counts – as they found out with wind turbines.
That sort of research is worthless. There are at least two scientifically valid bases for why CO2 has no significant effect on climate. One is described at Section 2 paragraph 8 and the other in Section 8 of http://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com .
When I read about this the other day in the Engineer magazine on line, my mind was transported to a scene from the Black Adder series.
It’s the one where Percy announces he has perfected a way of making gold, and presents Black adder with his triumphant achievement. Black Adder corrects Percy’s observations and reflects the reality, i.e. Percy has produced a splat of green.
“Purest green!” Dollars that is, the climate scam!
Humanity needs hundreds of watt-hours of energy each day per person just for cooking, food preparation and storage, Add to this the energy needed for provisioning potable water and waste handling. Then there is heating and cooling. While advances like this one are interesting, they are far more of academic interest than of practical use on the scale necessary.
Other technologies are afoot, like: https://brilliantlightpower.com/news/
Making Syngas with high temperature and fuel with Fisher-Tropsch is pretty standard chemical engineering fare, used by Germany in WW2 and South Africa for many years. Depending on scale, it can be competitive with bio-diesel, and grain ethanol fuels. Using sunlight as the heat source limits this to low fuel production rates for the real estate used.
Sounds like this is a good idea but looks like more energy in than any useful output.
Our energy infrastructure is not a given but a work in progress. It has evolved from animal power, windmills, and watermills, whale oil, to hydro, fossil fuels, and nuclear – and it will continue to evolve; and that evolution will be driven by the market for energy where new ideas and technologies will compete and market forces, not fear mongering activism, will determine winners and losers.
This month’s BREAKTHROUGH THAT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING !!!
Meh.
None of the epic inventions of the late 19th and 20th century came from academia eg light bulb, automobile, radio, TV, phonograph, transitor, intergrated circuit….. I don’t expect any now. The drive in academia is to write a paper not to invent something commercializable
re: “None of the epic inventions of the late 19th and 20th century came from academia eg light bulb, automobile, radio, TV, phonograph, transitor, intergrated circuit….. I don’t expect any now. The drive in academia is to write a paper not to invent something commercializable”
Add to that the Hydrino, and the (I contend the misnamed) SunCell ™.
ristvan, are you reading this? Caveat to others as well …
~ctm –>
https://www.google.com/search?q=printed+toilet+roll&oq=printed+toilet+&aqs=chrome.2.69i57j0l3.17036j0j9&client=ms-android-huawei&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=
–> Rundablage aka
https://www.google.com/search?q=waste+paper+bin&oq=waste+paper+bin&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l3.6878j0j9&client=ms-android-huawei&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=
Soviel Zeit möchte ich gern haben. Would like to have that much time.