Cracking open a CO2 molecule to harvest the carbon to make plastics and other necessary items is routine chemistry. But it takes so much energy, as well as costly rare-earth catalysts, that often it isn’t worth the trouble.
Now engineers at the University of California in Los Angeles have found a way to enlist sunlight to do the work.
The researchers found that the ultraviolet light in sunshine activates molecules of oligophenylene, part of the family of benzene hydrocarbons.
When sunlight hits oligophenylene, the chemical becomes negatively charged. That means it can transfer electrons to nearby CO2 molecules, making them less stable and much easier to break apart into carbon and oxygen.
The engineering team now is working on ways to speed up the process and to use portions of the visible light spectrum to activate the reaction.
TRENDPOST: Humans dump more than 25 billion tons of carbon waste gas into the atmosphere each year; the concentration of carbon in our air has grown 45 percent in less than a century. Finding cheap ways to harvest and re-use CO2 will create new industries that also could help to ease the weather extremes excess carbon in the atmosphere causes.
