A photo from open sources
The idea of creating artificial leaves that could recycle excess carbon dioxide appeared in the past century, but it became especially relevant in our time, when the planet it’s literally suffocating from greenhouse gases, and forests at this only diminishes.
For the first time, the success of creating an artificial sheet was trumpeted in 2014 the year when an English student Julian Melkiorri demonstrated the scientific world his invention – a suspension of chloroplasts, which he isolated from plant leaves and placed in a substance from fibroin silks.
A photo from open sources
There were other similar inventions, but they all sinned by that demonstrated photosynthesis at the laboratory level, and to solve problems with greenhouse gases on a global scale were needed artificial sheets of large areas, with the condition that they themselves and in large quantities pulled carbon dioxide from air.
And then scientists at the University of Illinois in Chicago seem to come up close to solving this problem. According to Minesh Singh, one from the co-authors of this invention, their artificial sheet placed into an aqueous capsule from a semipermeable membrane capable of absorbing CO2 capable of converting greenhouse gas to oxygen and carbon monoxide gas. And if the first one can just be sent back into the air, then the second is an excellent starting material for the production of synthetic fuel. Artificial leaf, an area of only a third of the square meters capable of producing up to half a ton of CO per day.
A photo from open sources
Singh in a press release published on the site Institute, assures that their artificial sheets, an area of 500 square meters can lower carbon dioxide levels in airspace within a hundred meters by 10 percent per daylight hours. It is many times more effective than natural greens. Moreover, artificial leaves do not require any complex technological and material costs – all this is cheap, easy and quite effective. UIC scientists confidently state that their invention should play a significant role in reducing greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere without increasing the area under green spaces.
You can read more about all this in the scientific journal. Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, including enthusiastic reviews of many prominent scientists of the world who appreciated achievement researchers from Chicago.
