Thursday

Device Uses Solar Energy To Convert Carbon Dioxide Into Fuel

There is a lot of time spent talking about what should be blamed for causing global warning and not enough on finding practical soloutions. Thankfully, scientists at the University of California are working on a way of exploiting sunlight to transfer greenhouse gas into useful products such as energy. The process involves splitting CO2 into carbon monoxide and oxygen. Doing this would have several benefits; it is more fuel efficient than splitting H2O, which is currently more common, it produces a useful chemical, which is used for various things such as making plastics, and more importantly, it reduces greenhouse gas.
Right now, the problem is making a semiconductor powerful enough to make the splitting of CO2 practical. They are looking at a gallium-phosphide semiconductor, which has a band gap large enough so that no additional energy source needs to be implemented for help. It is also a great absorber of energetic visible light.
Hopefully, they find out the missing piece of this puzzle as it can be very beneficial to our planet.

-Manuel Contreras

Here's the link to the article:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070418091932.htm

2 comments:

chemistry 1045 said...

I thing that in most of the cases people spend more time thinking and analysinzg how thinsg could be better instead of taking action!

This article clearly shows me that there are indeed people that are trying to solve problems, as for these, transforming CO2 into Carbon monoxide and oxygen!

Producing useful chemicals for the productions of making plastics and the primary problem to solve - REDUCING THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT!!

Thanks for sharing this info!!

Nohora C. DUque!!

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