The Technology
We combined Dr. Daniel Nocera's artificial leaf with Stanford researchers' hydrocarbon synthesis reaction into a single revolutionary apparatus, complete with two compartments where the reactions can occur continuously.
How It Works
1. The first, larger compartment is filled with freshwater, which can be cycled through the apparatus via the piping on the bottom.
2. An artificial leaf — a sheet of silicon coated on one side with a cobalt catalyst and the other with a nickel-molybdenum-zinc alloy catalyst, designed by Dr. Daniel Nocera and suspended in the first compartment — splits the water into hydrogen and oxygen gas in the presence of sunlight.
3. The oxygen gas escapes from the compartment, while the hydrogen gas is captured on the other side of the apparatus.
4. The hydrogen is combined with carbon dioxide (isolated from the surroundings and pumped into the second compartment) and synthesized in the presence of a new catalyst into simple hydrocarbons like methane and ethanol. (This compartment may have to be redesigned depending on the reaction prompted by the future catalyst.)
5. The hydrocarbons exit the second compartment and are refined elsewhere into fuel, olefins (plastics), and other commodities.
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A prototype is at left. See our diagram and video below for more details.
*Correction - 1:39 should say "hydrogen gas," not "oxygen gas."