New Solar Cells Can Convert CO2 Into Hydrocarbon Fuel (nextbigfuture.com)

"Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have engineered a potentially game-changing solar cell that cheaply and efficiently converts atmospheric carbon dioxide directly into usable hydrocarbon fuel, using only sunlight for energy," reports Next Big Future. Slashdot reader William Robinson writes: This artificial leaf delivers syngas, or synthesis gas, a mixture of hydrogen gas and carbon monoxide. Syngas can be burned directly, or converted into diesel or other hydrocarbon fuels. The discovery opens up possibilities of clean reusable energy.
"A solar farm of such 'artificial leaves' could remove significant amounts of carbon from the atmosphere and produce energy-dense fuel efficiently..." according to the article, which adds that the process could prove useful in the high-carbon atmosphere of Mars. "Unlike conventional solar cells, which convert sunlight into electricity that must be stored in heavy batteries, the new device essentially does the work of plants, converting atmospheric carbon dioxide into fuel, solving two crucial problems at once."

Comments

Re:Expected efficiency and cost?

[AmiMoJo]

Bio fuels require you to grow stuff, which means maintaining the soil, keeping pests away, harvesting etc. These converters should be a lot simpler.

Re:Conspiracy Theory Coming

[davidwr]

And 20 years later when the patent expires and no one wants a functioning, researched, unencumbered technology? How does your conspiracy handle that scenario?

I'm not the poster you are talking to, but I will give a reason why useful patent-unencumbered things may never make it to market, and by extension, why a competitor may want to buy up the rights to promising technology and put it on the shelf, knowing that economic forces alone will keep it from seeing the light of day even after the patents expire:

Many technologies are "partially researched" or "completely researched but still millions of dollars away from going to market for the first time." Maybe the device or drug or whatever requires expensive government approval, or maybe there are other "up front costs" that will be the burden of only the first company that brings it to market.

Without patent protection, it's a hard sell to investors if they know that 1) the first company to bring this to market will have $MILLIONS more in costs than any other company who brings it to market, and 2) without a patent, the "exclusivity window" will be very short: Just the time it takes for some other company to smell money and ramp up production.

This is one reason why some non-FDA-approved or "FDA-listed-as-schedule-1-because-nobody-has-shown-the-FDA-there-is-any-medical-use-for-it" drugs which are off-patent or patent-ineligible never make it to market: The cost of FDA approval is borne by the company that wants to bring it to market first, but once it's approved it can be copied fairly quickly.

Well-known examples include medicinal use of marijuana in the United States from the mid-20th century until 10 or 20 years ago (I think it's still technically not FDA-approved but the feds are looking the other way in states that have laws that allow for its use) and ibogaine as a treatment for opiate addictions.