US scientists have developed a new biofuel energy production method that draws on a process that takes place within nature.

These scientists – who work at Ohio’s University of Cincinnati – have been working on ways of combining solar energy and atmospheric CO2, and their inspiration is a semi-tropical type of frog native to countries including El Salvador, Mexico, Columbia and Trinidad and Tobago.

Together, Professor David Wendell, Dean Carlo Montemagno and Jacob Todd, a student, have devised a method to create an artificial photosynthetic material that utilises frog, plant, fungal and bacterial enzymes to make sugars, drawing on CO2 and solar rays in the process.

Frog Foam Biofuel

During the natural process of photosynthesis – which takes place in plants and other types of organisms - sunlight converts CO2 into organic compounds such as sugars. The scientists’ method mirrors this process, save that the photosynthesis occurs within foam-covered enzymes, and that sugar biofuels are created from it.

The foam was selected due to its ability to allow large amounts of air and light to enter it, and the design took its cue from the foam nests of the Tungura frog.

Artificial Photosynthesis: Biofuel

The artificial photosynthesis is superior to that of nature in that no solar energy is wasted, so in this regard it is 100 per cent energy-efficient. “The advantage for our system compared to plants and algae is that all of the captured solar energy is converted to sugars, whereas these organisms must divert a great deal of energy to other functions to maintain life and reproduce”, Professor Wendell explained.

“Our foam also uses no soil, so food production would not be interrupted, and it can be used in highly enriched carbon dioxide environments, like the exhaust from coal-burning power plants, unlike many natural photosynthetic systems.

“In natural plant systems, too much carbon dioxide shuts down photosynthesis, but ours does not have this limitation due to the bacterial-based photo-capture strategy.”

For the future, Professor Wendell and his colleagues now intend to look into ways to make this technology mass market-viable, for potential use in industrial settings, like fossil fuel incinerators.

“This new technology establishes an economical way of harnessing the physiology of living systems by creating a new generation of functional materials that intrinsically incorporates life processes into its structure”, Dean Montemagno added.

“Specifically in this work it presents a new pathway of harvesting solar energy to produce either oil or food with efficiencies that exceed other biosolar production methodologies. More broadly it establishes a mechanism for incorporating the functionality found in living systems into systems that we engineer and build.”

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