{"id":68400,"date":"2019-11-13T06:52:02","date_gmt":"2019-11-13T05:52:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rss.nova-institut.net\/public.php?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.chemie.de%2Fnews%2F1163571%2Fkuenstliches-blatt-verwandelt-schaedliches-kohlendioxid-in-nuetzlichen-alternativen-kraftstoff.html%3FWT.mc_id%3Dca0065%26pk_campaign%3Dca0065"},"modified":"2021-09-09T21:26:08","modified_gmt":"2021-09-09T19:26:08","slug":"scientists-create-artificial-leaf-that-turns-carbon-dioxide-into-fuel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/scientists-create-artificial-leaf-that-turns-carbon-dioxide-into-fuel\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists create ‘artificial leaf’ that turns carbon dioxide into fuel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scientists have created an \u201cartificial leaf\u201d to fight climate change by inexpensively converting harmful carbon dioxide (CO2<\/sub>) into a useful alternative fuel.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The new technology, outlined in a paper published today in the journal Nature Energy, was inspired by the way plants use energy from sunlight to turn carbon dioxide into food.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe call it an artificial leaf because it mimics real leaves and the process of photosynthesis,\u201d said\u00a0Yimin Wu, an engineering professor at the University of Waterloo who led the research. \u201cA leaf produces glucose and oxygen. We produce methanol and oxygen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Making methanol from carbon dioxide, the primary contributor to global warming, would both reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide a substitute for the fossil fuels that create them.<\/p>\n

The key to the process is a cheap, optimized red powder called cuprous oxide.<\/p>\n

Engineered to have as many eight-sided particles as possible, the powder is created by a chemical reaction when four substances \u2013 glucose, copper acetate, sodium hydroxide and sodium dodecyl sulfate \u2013 are added to water that has been heated to a particular temperature.<\/p>\n

The powder then serves as the catalyst, or trigger, for another chemical reaction when it is mixed with water into which carbon dioxide is blown and a beam of white light is directed with a solar simulator.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the chemical reaction that we discovered,\u201d said Wu, who has worked on the project since 2015. \u201cNobody has done this before.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reaction produces oxygen, as in photosynthesis, while also converting carbon dioxide in the water-powder solution into methanol. The methanol is collected as it evaporates when the solution is heated.<\/p>\n

\"blobid3_1572540357992\"An hour-long chemical reaction creates the engineered red powder that is the key to new technology\u00a0to turn carbon dioxide into fuel.<\/h3>\n

Next steps in the research include increasing the methanol yield and commercializing the patented process to convert carbon dioxide collected from major greenhouse gas sources such as power plants, vehicles and oil drilling.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m extremely excited about the potential of this discovery to change the game,\u201d said Wu, a professor of mechanical and mechatronics engineering, and a member of the\u00a0Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology. \u201cClimate change is an urgent problem and we can help reduce CO2<\/sub> emissions while also creating an alternative fuel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wu collaborated on the paper, Facet-dependent active sites of a single Cu2<\/sub>O particle photocatalyst for CO2<\/sub> reduction to methanol, with Tijana Rajh and other researchers at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, as well as scientists at California State University, Northridge, and the City University of Hong Kong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scientists have created an \u201cartificial leaf\u201d to fight climate change by inexpensively converting harmful carbon dioxide (CO2) into a useful alternative fuel. The new technology, outlined in a paper published today in the journal Nature Energy, was inspired by the way plants use energy from sunlight to turn carbon dioxide into food. \u201cWe call it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572,5571],"tags":[14936,5627],"supplier":[4690],"class_list":["post-68400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","category-co2-based","tag-carbondioxide","tag-energy","supplier-university-of-waterloo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68400\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68400"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=68400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}