Harvard University researchers say they've created a half-chemical, half-biological system to generate liquid fuel, using air, water, and sunlight. As if that weren't enough, it takes climate-changing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere in the process.
A study published on Thursday in the journal Science advances research led by Daniel Nocera, a professor of energy at Harvard who has spent years trying to best nature’s original workhorse technology—photosynthesis. Nocera has been developing what he calls an “artificial leaf.” Trees and other vegetation act as atmospheric filters, sucking in carbon dioxide and locking it in their trunks and branches (a process that's suddenly reversed by wildfires). The new system announced today is 10 times more energy efficient than natural organisms are, according to the paper.
The artificial leaf looks nothing like a leaf, though. Pamela Silver, a Harvard biochemistry professor who co-authored the paper with Nocera, said visitors to her lab seem disappointed when they realize this. “It’s just a jar with wires coming out of it,” she said. “It looks like science.”
