Researchers have found a way to convert carbon dioxide into fuel.
Around about 2.4 billion years ago something pretty important happened…no, it wasn’t the evolution of the first lycra-producing algae and neither was it the visit to this planet of double-helix shaped aliens from the star-cluster Diana Nubla. In fact, it was around 2.4 billion years ago that an organism produced glucose and oxygen from carbon dioxide and water, using only light from the sun as a source of energy…yes, that’s when photosynthesis first occurred. It seemed such a good idea that plants have been utliising this reaction ever since. Of course, today we human beings have a significant problem with carbon dioxide driving climate change which is why a new discovery that may allow us to do something similar to photosynthesis is so exciting.
One of the major challenges in dealing with carbon dioxide is that it is chemically quite unreactive so that it is difficult to convert it to something else. To perform photosynthesis plants use an enzyme and these researchers have developed their own enzyme equivalent to catalyse the breakdown of carbon dioxide.
The researchers used nanosized flakes of tungsten diselenide as their catalyst in the process that, just like photosynthesis, involved using photons of light to that would produce pairs of negatively charged electrons and corresponding positively charged holes that are then separated from each other. The positively charged holes react with water molecules to produce create protons (positively charged particles) and oxygen molecules. Lastly, the protons, electrons, and carbon dioxide all react together to produce carbon monoxide and water.
Carbon monoxide of course, is also a greenhouse gas but it is also much more reactive than carbon dioxide and we are already able to convert carbon monoxide into usable fuel such as methanol. The good news is that this reaction is very energy efficient which means it may be a viable way to recycle carbon dioxide.
It’s only taken us 2.4 billion years, but we’ve got there.
Source: Science
