VATIS UPDATE Article

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), the United States, have used an approach ‘it’s often smarter to borrow from nature than reinvent the wheel’ for the eradication of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, and its conversion into a resourceful, economical fuel. According to the researchers they have come up with an artificial leaf that converts CO2 into fuel, costing equivalent to a gallon of gasoline that may make fossil fuel outdated.

The ‘leaf’ is among the increasing number of inventions imitating photosynthesis for the removal of excess carbon from the atmosphere, and transforming it into new, sustainable energy forms to provide energy to the world. “The new solar cell is not photovoltaic – it’s photosynthetic. Instead of producing energy in an unsustainable one-way route from fossil fuels to greenhouse gas, we can now reverse the process and recycle atmospheric carbon into fuel using sunlight,” said Amin Salehi-Khojin, at UIC.

The solar cells created by Dr. Salehi-Khojin and his team work like the leaves of a plant. The sole difference is the artificial leaf doesn’t convert CO2 into sugar, instead changes the gaseous compound into synthesis gas, hydrogen and carbon monoxide mixture. The idea of reduction reaction, which means CO2 conversion into a burnable form of carbon, isn’t new. The only thing is, in the past scientists were dependent on silver and other costly metals for the breakdown of gas into storable energy.