There is a
$20 million prize at stake from the X Prize
Foundation (an organization that incentivizes scientific advancement via
financial competition, which it coins ‘prize philanthropy’). The challenge is
to find ways to recycle carbon dioxide (CO2)
- capturing it as it is emitted from smokestacks and turning it into useful
products or new fuel – by 2020.
A recent New York Times article
highlighted the efforts of several groups of researchers participating in this
project. One of the difficulties the researchers have is figuring out how best
to split CO2
molecules, which takes
a significant amount of energy. One group of scientists is trying to take CO2 and water and turn them into fuel
using sunlight – as plants do via photosynthesis. Other groups are working on
developing synthetic crude oil with CO2 and
water and a CO2
conversion device.
