Scientists from four UK universities have collaborated to develop a revolutionary process that uses solar energy to produce clean fuels, which they say could help solve looming global energy shortages.
By using nanotechnology – an increasingly common practice in the field of solar innovation – researchers from the Universities of Manchester, East Anglia (UEA), Nottingham and York are tapping the vast power of the sun to produce hydrogen from water in much the same way plants use photosynthesis to produce sugar from solar energy.
The technique involves grafting catalytic molecules onto photovoltaic nano-particles called quantum dots which absorb sunlight. The scientists are aiming to use the same technology to create alternatives for other fuels and feedstock chemicals, including turning methane into liquid methanol and carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide.
“Creating catalytic devices which harvest light energy using quantum dots, or photovoltaic materials to drive the formation of synthetic fuels from water or carbon dioxide can be viewed as artificial photosynthesis,” says UEA’s Professor Chris Pickett. “Globally, chemists, physicists and materials scientists are coming together to work on artificial photosynthesis to get to a stage where we can viably make clean, green fuels.”
Hopes are that in the future hydrogen could be extracted from water using solar energy, replacing fossil fuels as a primary source of the clean fuel, and ensuring a constant supply of renewable energy.
The University of Manchester’s Professor Wendy Flavell envisages a day when solar fuels are used to provide baseload power.
“One of the key questions is: ‘what do we do when the sun goes down, what happens at night?’ If we can store the energy harnessed from the sun during the day then we will have supplies ready to use when the sun is not shining. To make better use of the fantastic resource we have in our Sun, we need to find out how to create solar fuel that can be stored and shipped to where it is needed and used on demand.”
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