Carbon emissions and sunlight to make fuel

Researchers from the Clean Energy Research Centre at the University of B.C. are trying to utilize waste gas CO2 that very harmful for the environment to be converted into fuel that can be used again use the help of solar radiation energy.

Researchers revealed that the CO2 emitted from the power plants or factories that combined with water through chemical processes can be turned into methane, methanol, formic acid and other fuels. But carbon dioxide molecules that very stable and hard to break it down become a challenge for researchers , and it appears the idea to ​​using sunlight to start the reaction.

As a catalyst, the researchers used electrodes made ​​of sheets of titanium oxide coated with platinum, copper and other materials. Sunlight will be used to transform CO2 into fuel in the presence of water, and it will become an energy recycling process in which water will be a byproduct.

An other challenge for researchers are to develop microscopically small structures in catalyzing material to be able to extract a required amount of fuel of process. A process that also conducted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration on its mission of Gemini space missions to produce water from the carbon dioxide that present in the cabin.

The process will be tested in a small scale first and then to strategic places emitter of greenhouse gases such as in factories and power plants.