Turning Carbon into Solar Fuel – Closing the Loop on CO2 Emissions

by Scarlett Evans (Bio Market Insights) ... Finding technologies to curb our carbon is essential, and attention is turning to projects that make carbon cutting a priority.

One such project is that of Swinburne University of Technology’s Associate professor Tianyi Ma, who is investigating the repurposing of carbon dioxide to make ‘solar fuels’ such as green methane, carbon monoxide and methanol. Ma received an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellowship of more than $937,000 earlier this month for the project and we spoke to him about what’s next and, if successful, what the technology could mean for our carbon emissions.

Ma’s technology also looks to harness solar to create clean energy sources, but his tech uses solar energy directly, harnessing a process called photocatalysis in which energy from the sun is chemically converted into secondary energy sources such as hydrogen, or hydrocarbon fuels.

“In my technology, we use what we call a photo-catalyst,” says Ma. “This is to convert the solar energy not into electricity, but into chemical energies to be stored in small molecules such as hydrogen or carbon monoxide. These small molecules are then energy carriers so when they’re burned, they will release the chemical energy.”

“There’s no step to convert the solar energy into electricity,” he explains further. “My technology is converting this solar power directly into chemical energy, capturing it and injecting it into carbon dioxide to effectively convert it into some useful energy small molecules.”

“So in a mining site for example, we’ll capture the CO2 and use our catalyst and the radiation of solar energy to convert it into useful energy molecules.”

When it comes to the catalysts themselves, Ma says the team has a few candidates.

When it comes to economic viability, Ma’s tech uses far cheaper materials than those used in solar panels, offering significant savings for investors.

Ma has previously done research into using a photocatalytic process to produce hydrogen from seawater, which was described as ‘among the best catalysts ever reported’ by Baohua Jia, Founding Director of the Centre for Translational Atomaterials when the paper was released in February. Ma’s team is also developing a prototype to pursue this method of hydrogen production. READ MORE