Technology
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Researchers at the University of Cambridge have developed a brand-new device designed to capture carbon dioxide directly from the air and turn it into fuel – and it does so with only the power of the Sun.
Direct air carbon capture is far from a new idea, but time has yet to solve all of its problems. One of the significant issues is that it’s costly, not just financially but energetically too; if it has to rely on the more readily available fossil fuels, that somewhat throws a spanner in the works of the whole sustainability thing.
“Aside from the expense and the energy intensity, [Carbon Capture and Storage] 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 heads up a Cambridge lab developing sustainable energy technology, in a statement.
Reisner and his team sought to find a solution, and what they landed on was inspired by a natural process: photosynthesis. Similar to how plants require only sunlight as the energy source for converting carbon dioxide and water into oxygen and sugar, their new reactor device is also solely solar-powered.
The reactor is intended to work diurnally. The first step takes place at night, with the device capturing carbon dioxide directly from the air using specialized filters made out of a solid silica-amine adsorbent.
Things then heat up during the day; a mirror concentrates sunlight onto the bed of captured carbon dioxide, releasing it into another part of the device that contains a bed of semiconductor powder and triggering a chemical reaction that converts the carbon dioxide into syngas.
Syngas is short for synthesis gas, and though it can be used as a fuel itself, the team is aiming to find a way of converting it into a more widely useful liquid fuel – and to make their design even bigger.
“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 Dr Sayan Kar, first author of the study providing the details of the reactor. “CO2 is seen as a harmful waste product, but it is also an opportunity.”
If they’re successful in their efforts, the team suggests that it presents an opportunity to move away from fossil fuels and produce fuel that could be widely accessible and truly sustainable.
“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.”
The study is published in Nature Energy.
