artificial photosynthesis

EPFL engineers have built and tested a solar reactor that generates hydrogen gas from sunlight and water. The system is not only highly efficient at producing hydrogen, it also captures the “waste” products of oxygen and heat to put them to use too.

"Artificial leaf" systems could play a key role in the fight against climate change, and a team of engineers has just picked up the pace with a solution that captures carbon dioxide at 100 times the rate of current technologies.

Scientists have demonstrated how encasing algae in tiny liquid crystal droplets can boost its natural energy harvesting abilities by up to three times, marking another step toward commercial viability for artificial photosynthesis.

Scientists have now demonstrated a new type of artificial photosynthesis technology that can not only produce clean hydrogen fuel, but undergo morphological changes during use that makes it become more efficient over time.

A team from the University of Cambridge has produced a wireless sheet packed with photocatalysts that converts sunlight, water and carbon dioxide into clean fuels, with hopes of one day using the device as part of giant energy farms.

Over the last few years humans have tried to mimic nature with artificial leaves, but they’re never quite up to scratch. Now, researchers have designed a new version that could work under real-world conditions, sucking carbon dioxide out of the air and creating oxygen and synthetic fuels.

Researchers at Rutgers University have made an exciting breakthrough, describing a new method of artificial photosynthesis that can convert carbon dioxide into the building blocks for plastics and other materials, and do so with greater efficiency and much more cheaply than ever before. ​

Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) claim to have created a hybrid artificial photosynthesis system that produces both hydrogen and methane, all from water and solar energy.