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Scientists Just Built a CO2-Eating Machine That Runs on Sunlight

Austin Tang — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 14:29:20 +0000

Researchers have developed a reactor that pulls carbon dioxide directly from the air and converts it into sustainable fuel, using sunlight as the power source. Credit: University of Cambridge

Scientists have developed a sunlight-powered reactor that directly captures CO₂ from the air and transforms it into sustainable fuel.

Unlike traditional carbon capture methods, this device requires no fossil-fuel energy, making it a game-changer for the climate crisis. By mimicking photosynthesis, it produces syngas, a crucial ingredient in fuel and pharmaceuticals, with plans to scale up for liquid fuel production.

Harnessing Sunlight for Sustainable Fuel

Scientists at the University of Cambridge have developed a solar-powered reactor that captures carbon dioxide directly from the air and converts it into sustainable fuel using sunlight.

This innovative reactor has the potential to produce fuel for cars and planes, as well as essential chemicals and pharmaceuticals. It could also provide a reliable energy source in remote or off-grid locations.

Unlike traditional carbon capture technologies, which require fossil fuel energy and involve transporting and storing CO₂, this reactor eliminates those steps. Instead, it directly converts atmospheric CO₂ into useful products using only sunlight. The research findings were published today (February 13) in Nature Energy.

The Limitations of Conventional Carbon Storage

While Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) has been promoted as a solution to the climate crisis—receiving £22 billion (~$27 billion) in UK government funding—it remains highly energy-intensive. Additionally, concerns persist over the long-term safety of storing pressurized CO₂ deep underground, though ongoing studies are assessing these risks.

“Aside from the expense and the energy intensity, CCS provides an excuse to carry on burning fossil fuels, which is what caused the climate crisis in the first place,” said Professor Erwin Reisner, who led the research. “CCS is also a non-circular process, since the pressurized CO₂ is, at best, stored underground indefinitely, where it’s of no use to anyone.”

Turning a Harmful Gas into Useful Chemicals

“What if instead of pumping the carbon dioxide underground, we made something useful from it?” said first author Dr Sayan Kar from Cambridge’s Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry. “CO₂ is a harmful greenhouse gas, but it can also be turned into useful chemicals without contributing to global warming.”

The focus of Reisner’s research group is the development of devices that convert waste, water, and air into practical fuels and chemicals. These devices take their inspiration from photosynthesis: the process by which plants convert sunlight into food. The devices don’t use any outside power: no cables, no batteries – all they need is the power of the sun.

From Air to Syngas: The Key Breakthrough

The team’s newest system takes CO₂ directly from the air and converts it into syngas: a key intermediate in the production of many chemicals and pharmaceuticals. The researchers say their approach, which does not require any transportation or storage, is much easier to scale up than earlier solar-powered devices.

The device, a solar-powered flow reactor, uses specialized filters to grab CO₂ from the air at night, like how a sponge soaks up water. When the sun comes out, the sunlight heats up the captured CO₂, absorbing infrared radiation and a semiconductor powder absorbs the ultraviolet radiation to start a chemical reaction that converts the captured CO₂ into solar syngas. A mirror on the reactor concentrates the sunlight, making the process more efficient.

Towards Liquid Fuels and Scaled-Up Solutions

The researchers are currently working on converting solar syngas into liquid fuels, which could be used to power cars, planes, and more – without adding more CO₂ to the atmosphere.

“If we made these devices at scale, they could solve two problems at once: removing CO₂ from the atmosphere and creating a clean alternative to fossil fuels,” said Kar. “CO₂ is seen as a harmful waste product, but it is also an opportunity.”

A Future Without Fossil Fuels?

The researchers say that a particularly promising opportunity is in the chemical and pharmaceutical sector, where syngas can be converted into many of the products we rely on every day, without contributing to climate change. They are building a larger scale version of the reactor and hope to begin tests in the spring.

If scaled up, the researchers say their reactor could be used in a decentralized way, so that individuals could theoretically generate their own fuel, which would be useful in remote or off-grid locations.

“Instead of continuing to dig up and burn fossil fuels to produce the products we have come to rely on, we can get all the CO₂ we need directly from the air and reuse it,” said Reisner. “We can build a circular, sustainable economy – if we have the political will to do it.”

Reference: “Direct air capture of CO₂ for solar fuel production in flow” by Sayan Kar, Dongseok Kim, Ariffin Bin Mohamad Annuar, Bidyut Bikash Sarma, Michael Stanton, Erwin Lam, Subhajit Bhattacharjee, Suvendu Karak, Heather F. Greer and Erwin Reisner, 13 February 2025, Nature Energy.
DOI: 10.1038/s41560-025-01714-y

The technology is being commercialized with the support of Cambridge Enterprise, the University’s commercialization arm. The research was supported in part by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the European Research Council, the Royal Academy of Engineering, and the Cambridge Trust. Erwin Reisner is a Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge.

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Thought for the Day…12/11/24

Austin Tang — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 13:29:15 +0000

The post Thought for the Day…12/11/24 appeared first on Good News!.

Carbon Dioxide Is a Pollutant. Please Help Establish That Fact…

Austin Tang — Tue, 21 Jun 2022 19:57:24 +0000

May 2022 Temperature Update

17 June 2022
James Hansen, Makiko Sato and Reto Ruedy
CO2 fits perfectly EPA’s definition of a chemical substance that presents “an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment.” Congress, with strong bipartisan agreement, established the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA; acronym pronounced tosca) in 1976 and – with bipartisan support again – strengthened the law in 2016. This law has been used successfully to phase out or reduce many substances, including asbestos, lead in paint, PCBs, and CFCs[1]. EPA has broad latitude in how to achieve reductions and can work with other agencies for that purpose.

Citizens may petition EPA on the need to address a pollutant under TSCA. EPA must respond to a petition within 90 days. Yesterday several of us[a] delivered to EPA a petition[2] for phase out of greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution to restore a stable and healthy climate. The prospects for EPA to accept their obligation will be much improved if we can present them with an impressive list of endorsers of the petition. Please examine the petition and consider adding your name as an endorser of the petition. United States citizens are especially relevant as endorsers, but there is also value in support of world citizens for what is a global problem.

Fig. 1, our global temperature update, is a reminder that the world is headed inexorably toward hotter conditions, as the cooling effect of the current strong La Nina barely got global temperature down to the increasing trendline of global temperature. The 12-month running-mean temperature is already heading toward the next global record that will occur in conjunction with the next El Nino.[3]

[a] Dan Galpern (Hansen’s long-time attorney, who worked for months on this petition), Donn Vivianni (retired EPA scientist who alerted us to the TSCA potential for greenhouse gases), Lisa Van Susteren (physician, writer and world’s leading authority on the psychiatric effects on young people of daily news about growing climate impacts while adults do little to alter the course), and atmospheric chemist John Birks, and Hansen. (Co-petitioner climate accountability analyst Richard Heede could not be present for the delivery to EPA).

Fig. 2. Cumulative 1751-2020 fossil fuel carbon emissions (tons C/person; 2020 populations). Horizontal lines are multiples of the global mean. The order of individual nations from left to right is based on cumulative national emissions.
Fig. 2 is a reminder that the United States is most responsible for the fossil fuel CO2 emissions that are the dominant cause of human-made climate change. We can also be leaders in the solution if we begin to make the polluters pay via a steadily rising carbon fee with the funds distributed to the public (a conservative, bipartisan approach). Of course, the timing has to be right. The best time was years ago. If the rising price had started a decade and a half ago, when Obama and Biden were elected and had the opportunity afforded by a global financial emergency, U.S. emissions and fossil fuel use would be down at least 40% and we would have plenty of excess energy capacity to help Europe with its near-term fossil fuel energy demands.

Evoking TSCA will not demand an instant carbon price – the timing needs to be sensible. However, it will be a huge step, putting us on a course with the potential to address the climate problem globally. The huge U.S. economy allows the opportunity to affect the global approach via border duties on products from countries that do not have a carbon fee.

Other policies also need to be sensible. Whose idea was it to immediately halt import of Russian fuels? The predictable effect was to raise the price of fossil fuels, causing huge pain in the West – and in the rest of the world, which thus must choose to look the other way as Ukraine suffers.

What courage. When Putin says that he will get angry if we send the weapons that Ukrainians need to defend their nation, our leaders quake and instead take actions that sacrifice Ukrainian lives, raise our own energy costs, and increase Putin’s profits needed to wage war.

It’s expecting a lot to ask young people to understand what their political leaders are doing, but as we mentioned in last month’s temperature update, that seems to be necessary, and young people have tremendous potential political power. More on that later.

Hansen, Van Susteren, Vivianni and Galpern about to deliver petition (Birks was photographer).

[1] CFCs hardly seemed toxic. In early advertisements, the chemical industry showed a person breathing in “harmless” CFCs, but then we discovered their impact on the ozone layer and their greenhouse gas effect. Likewise, CO 2 was initially thought to be a beneficial gas; and so it is, if you limit the dosage.
[2] Viviani, D.J., J. Birks, R. Heede, L. Van Susteren, J.E. Hansen, Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions, and Climate Protection & Restoration Initiative, Petition to the Environmental Protection Agency to Phase-out Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions and Remove Legacy GHGs, 16 June 2022. Part I and Part II (Select scientific and economic considerations).
[3] The promised discussion about the record current planetary energy imbalance will need to wait a while.

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#carbondioxide #co2 #pollutantfact #hansen #vansusteren #vivianni #galpern #deliver #petition #birks #photographer #health #environment #humanclimatechange #climatechange #fossilfuels

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