Scientists Transform Carbon Dioxide into Clean Air

The professor of chemistry has invented a new and exciting way to mimic photosynthesis using synthetic materials to not only remove the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere but also to produce energy.

The revolution of this process to produce the power needed to eliminate the GHGs emitted from the existing electricity plants and other industries along with better alternative options one, among all, will be the production of a clean kind of energy only.

The findings, published in Journal of Materials Chemistry A, represent a discovery in chemistry that can significantly change the future. “The principle of actually tuning the materials to capture light in selective spectra is not a simple problem at all,” said UCF Assistant Professor Fernando Uribe-Romo, “but still we from the society are the ones who are paving the way for technologies that will help us to fight against greenhouse gases.”

Uribe-Romo and his coworkers came up with a new procedure to set in motion a chemical reaction in a cultivar of metal-organic frameworks (MOF) that involves a synthetic material. This reaction will destroy carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by converting it into non-toxic organic matter.

The successful program was able to deploy CO2 into two chemical byproducts – formate and formamides both of which are solar fuels – in a step that heavily cleans the atmosphere.
“The next target is to make the substance even more potent in order to attain a larger amount of reduced carbon. Therefore, the overall process will be more efficient,” commented Dr. Uribe-Romo.

Changing the chemical makeup of the synthetic material to allow other visible light wavelengths to initiate the reaction will be where he starts to uncover if this will be a success. If the revolution is achieved, this technology could be a valuable tool in the fight against global warming.

One envisioned application includes the use of stations that are near power plants for capturing and processing large amounts of CO2, the recycling being part of the energy generation process that could be recirculated to the plant. In the future, homeowners might even use rooftop shingles made of this material to clean their local air while generating energy to power their homes.