New artificial leaf design can absorb way more carbon dioxide than natural ones

Plants are known as nature’s natural air purifiers, absorbing carbon dioxide and giving out oxygen and energy via photosynthesis. Researchers have proposed a new artificial leaf design that mimics the process, but with greater accuracy rate.

Though artificial leaves have been created before, but never made it out of lab into real world. Scientists from the University of Illinois at Chicago have put forward a new design for artificial leave to bring them into natural environment and play a major role in cleaning up the air around us.

The team believes that the problem with already present artificial leaves is that they pull pure carbon dioxide from pressurized tanks in the lab, but in real world they need to be able to pull the gas from the air around them.

Synthetic photosynthesis is now a possibility

For their artificial leaves, the team described to place a traditional artificial leaf inside a water-filled capsule made out of a semi-permeable membrane. As the sunlight warms the water, it evaporates through the membrane. At the same time, the capsule would suck in carbon dioxide, explained Futurism.

The leaf inside would then convert the carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide and oxygen. The former could be pulled from the device used to create synthetic fuels ranging from gasoline to methanol, while the latter could be released back into the environment or collected.

“By enveloping traditional artificial leaf technology inside this specialized membrane,” lead researcher Meenesh Singh said, “the whole unit is able to function outside, like a natural leaf.”

The team believes that an artificial leaf built around the design would be 10 times more efficient at converting to fuel than the natural leaves. They estimate that 360 of their artificial leaves, each 1.7 meters long and 0.2 meters wide, would create about half a ton of carbon monoxide daily.

Spreading the leaves out over 500 square meters, the leaves could even reduce the carbon dioxide levels in air within 100 meters of the space by 10% in just one day.

“Our conceptual design uses readily available materials and technology,” Singh said, “that when combined can produce an artificial leaf that is ready to be deployed outside the lab where it can play a significant role in reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”