Carbon dioxide has long been deemed harmful to the environment, being blamed for holes in the ozone layer and polluting the air that humans breathe. New developments in green energy technology, however, has found a way to reduce the carbon dioxide produced by burning fuel in vehicles - by turning it back into fuel.
Green Energy
Green energy is any type of energy that relies on renewable resources as a form of electricity supply. These include hydropower, wind power, and solar power. These have been declared solutions to many environmental and health concerns worldwide. Solar power, according to this new development, is the best way to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This new technology allows scientists to turn carbon dioxide back into fuel using a photosynthesis-like process.
Carbon Dioxide Fuel
Long carbon chains have been proved useful in fuel production. Carbon dioxide, by being ionized by mixing water with its liquid form, has been found to create a long carbon chain. Even though this have proved useful, this technology still has a long way to go before scientists will be able to control how long the chains are and how many can be created. This process has also been proven as a way to create some natural gas as well as methanol.
By using carbon dioxide in the gas form it is found occurring in the atmosphere, scientists have been able to produce longer carbon chains with as many as nine atoms. These chains can be created with a limited control over the number of chains made. Scientists have been researching elemental molecules in an attempt to make this process more efficient and have found that simple iron rather than the more expensive elementals such as the commonly used platinum.
Stable Fuel
Carbon dioxide is considered a stable fuel source because there is so much of it in the environment already, and by turning it into fuel for automobiles, more will be produced, creating a cycle, much like the water cycle. As vehicles create carbon dioxide, energy plants can pull it out of the air and convert it into a burnable fuel source.
Overcoming Obstacles
The most major obstacle science is facing with this project of turning carbon dioxide into fuel is time and energy. To convert the carbon dioxide out of its gas form into liquid can take millions of years to occur naturally. If scientifically converted, it takes a great amount of energy, and many people are questioning if carbon dioxide conversion can produce as much energy as it requires. One answer that scientists are attempting to prove efficient is solar energy. With new technology being developed and introduced almost daily, it may not be long before the artificial leaf becomes a great answer to supplying power needed to convert carbon dioxide into fuel.
It will be a long time, researchers and scientists say, before the process of converting carbon dioxide into fuel becomes an effective, efficient practice, but it is a process worth looking into for the future of our Earth and environment.
