A Yale-led research team has developed the first standalone device that produces the liquid fuel methanol using only sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide as the ingredients. The artificial "leaf," like its namesake in nature, is a chemistry marvel. It brings the scientific mimicry of photosynthesis—the process of converting sunlight and water into chemical energy—to a new level, converting sunlight to methanol 32 times more efficiently than the previous conversion record for artificial leaf technologies that generate alcohol products.
"This looks promising, with a concept that is comparable to what nature does," said Hailiang Wang, a professor of chemistry in Yale's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, member of the Yale Energy Sciences Institute and Yale Center for Natural Carbon Capture, and senior author of a new study published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. "From the moment that we saw the first results it was super exciting."
The new "leaf" offers several commercial and environmental benefits. It pulls carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas and main contributor to climate change, from the air; it creates methanol, an increasingly popular chemical feedstock and alternative liquid fuel; and it suggests a viable new method for converting and storing solar energy.
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