"Bionic Reef" will be developed that produces alcohol by performing photosynthesis at 10 times the efficiency of nature

ByOregon Department of Transportation

Plants arechlorophyllIt is a very well known phenomenon that we use carbon dioxide (chlorophyll) to absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen to the atmosphere, but by adding chemistry power to this mechanism, it is 10 times as efficient as conventional Perform photosynthesis at, and generate alcohol that can be used as fuel "Bionic Reef(Leaves of biological science) "has been developed.

New "Bionic" Leaf Is Roughly 10 Times More Efficient Than Natural Photosynthesis - Scientific American
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-bionic-leaf-is-roughly-10-times-more-efficient-than-natural-photosynthesis/

This bionic leaf was developed jointly by Mr. Daniel Nocera, a scientist at Harvard University and its research team, with a research biologist, Pamela Silver, a Harvard Medical School's synthetic biologist. Although it is named "leaf (leaf)", Bionic Leaf is a system that causes a chemical reaction by using electric power generated by solar panel.

Bionic leaf first separates water into oxygen and hydrogen by electrolyzing water. Next, microorganisms incorporated in the system cause hydrogen reaction to generate alcohol from carbon dioxide in the air by consuming hydrogen. Alcohol thus produced can be used as fuel as usual.


The research team succeeded in developing the first bionic leaf as of 2015. At that time, I succeeded in producing 216 mg of alcohol from 1 liter of water, but there is a problem that the catalyst of nickel, molybdenum, zinc alloy used for reaction has toxicity to microorganisms was doing.

To solve this problem, the research team will work on research to find new catalysts. What was discovered was a catalyst using a cobalt-phosphorus alloy that has already been used as an anticorrosion coating agent for plastics and metals. By creating "Bionic Leaf 2.0" using this catalyst, the research team succeeded in raising the efficiency of producing alcohol by 10%. This means that every kilowatt hour every 130 kilograms of carbon dioxide to 60 grams of alcohol (IsopropanolIt means that it can produce ten times the efficiency of photosynthesis in the natural world.

It is said that it can be said that it can clear the two problems of solving environmental problems and generating energy source by generating alcohol which becomes fuel by taking in carbon dioxide which is greenhouse effect gas in the air. By absorbing carbon in the air using sunlight and converting it into fuel,Carbon neutralBeing an energy source seems to be a remarkable point.

The paper by this research is published in "Science" magazine.

Water splitting-biosynthetic system with CO2 reduction efficiencies exceeding photosynthesis | Science
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6290/1210