Every hour, the sun saturates the earth with more energy than humans use in a year.
Every hour, the sun saturates the earth with more energy than humans use in a year. Harnessing some of this energy to meet global demand has become a grand challenge, with the world poised to double its energy consumption in just thirty years.
In a new study, researchers at the Biodesign Center for Applied Structural Discovery (CASD) and ASU’s School of Molecular Sciences take a page from Nature’s lesson book. Inspired by the way plants and other photosynthetic organisms collect and use the sun’s radiant energy, they hope to develop technologies that harvest sunlight and store it as carbon-free or carbon-neutral fuels.
"This article describes a general yet useful strategy for better understanding the role of catalysts in emerging technologies for converting sunlight to fuels," says corresponding author Gary Moore.
The research appears in the current issue of the American Chemical Society (ACS) journal Applied Energy Materials and graces its cover.
Read more at Arizona State University
Image: Gary Moore is a researcher at the Biodesign Center for Applied Structural Discovery (CASD) and ASU's School of Molecular Sciences (Credit: The Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University)
