CAN ARTIFICIAL LEAF POWER THE WORLD?

We from sciences pills bring some interesting news for you. Scientists from Waterloo university Canada have come up with a new design for an artificial leaf. that means creating energy with a whole new way using a process which used by plants form millions of years I.e photosynthesis.

What is artifice leaf ?

Artificial leaf, a silicon-based device that uses solar energy to split hydrogen and oxygen in water, thereby producing hydrogen energy in a clean way, leaving virtually no pollutants. The technology, which was designed to simulate the natural energy-generating process of photosynthesis  used by plants, was first successfully developed by American chemist Daniel G. Nocera and colleagues in 2011. Further work was needed to improve its efficiency and cost-effectiveness for practical use.

 

Humans are always interesting to know how does plant makes energy and we could copy plant because they do a great job creating energy from the bare minimum elements.

Plants take water from the environment and observe co2 from atmosphere and add an energy boost of sunlight and made glucose or sugar that  they used energy and most oxygen and leftover water

 

6CO2        +    6H2O  →   C6H12O6   +    6O2   +     6H2O

(Carbon dioxide)    (Water)              (Glucose)        (Oxygen)       (Water)

But, instead of producing that glucose artificial leaf produces fuel that we humans can use the idea behind this technology is to produce cleaner-burning fuel while also scrubbing co2 from the air and producing oxygen now it no wonder that scientist have been trying to create one since, The 70s but, there is also a really good reason why they haven’t quite managed to make a fully functional commercial one yet now

There are many parts of photosynthesis that are really hard to do if you are not a plant one is that you need a catalyst that interacts with light energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.

A process called photolysis plants do this in their chloroplast ( the little energy-producing factory in the cell )

Some scientists have pursued creating systems that take light energy and make hydrogen which can further use as fuel this won’t work not just because it is a very complex process but, we don’t actually use hydrogen as fuel.

So scientists have to come up with a new idea to use this hydrogen and co2 from air to form an alternative fuel that something we humans can use as fuel now. Such as methanol scientists still finding a way to make it efficient and scale-able.