February 18, 2019

Good Morning,

Artificial leaves have been created and are ready for the outdoors to battle carbon emissions.

Learn about this and more interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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*-- CO2-capturing artificial leaves ready to leave the lab --*

Thanks to a breakthrough design by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago, artificial leaves are ready to leave the lab and make their debut in the real world.

Carbon emissions continue unabated across much of the planet. For scientists, public policy makers and climate change activists, curbing emissions remains the top strategy for tackling global warming. But researchers are also searching for ways to pull CO2 from the air.

Scientists have invented a variety of carbon-converting devices, but one of the most promising technologies, the artificial leaf, only works in the lab -- until now. Researchers in Chicago have designed a new artificial leaf capable of converting CO2 and water into carbohydrates in the real world.

In the lab, CO2 comes in a pure, concentrated form. Outside, carbon dioxide is more diffuse. Artificial leaves have failed to adapt.

"So far, all designs for artificial leaves that have been tested in the lab use carbon dioxide from pressurized tanks," Meenesh Singh, an assistant professor of chemical engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said in a news release. "In order to implement successfully in the real world, these devices need to be able to draw carbon dioxide from much more dilute sources, such as air and flue gas, which is the gas given off by coal-burning power plants."

Without a direct injection of CO2, artificial leaves must collect and concentrate carbon dioxide to trigger photosynthesis. Chicago researchers encased an artificial leaf in a semi-permeable membrane made of a water-filled quaternary ammonium resin. When water passes through the membrane, it pulls CO2 from the surrounding air.

Inside the membrane, a light absorber coated with catalysts converts the CO2 into carbon monoxide, a starter compound that can be used to create a variety of synthetic fuels.

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

Researchers described their new device in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering.

According to the calculations of Singh and his colleagues, 360 of the artificial leaves, spread across a 1,600 square-foot area, reduce carbon dioxide levels by 10 percent from air within 330 feet.

"Our conceptual design uses readily available materials and technology, 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," Singh said.

*-- Scientists use spacecraft's measurements to study solar wind heating --*

With the help of a NASA spacecraft, astrophysicists have uncovered the process by which energy is transferred between electromagnetic fields and plasma in space.

Most of the visible matter in the universe exists in the form of plasma, an ionized state of matter. Understanding how energy is transferred to and from ionized particles in space can help scientists to better understand a variety of cosmological phenomena.

The transfer of energy from electromagnetic turbulence in space to the electrons in the solar wind is caused by a process known as Landau damping. When electromagnetic waves travel through plasma and the plasma particles themselves are traveling at the same speeds, the plasma particles absorb the wave's energy, reducing -- or damping -- the electromagnetic wave.

Landau damping has only been observed in relatively simple space environments. Until now, scientists weren't sure whether the Landau damping could explain energy transfer among more turbulent electromagnetic fields and complex plasma environs.

To measure the energization of solar wind in space, scientists analyzed the observations of NASA's Magnetospheric Multi-Scale spacecraft. Researchers used a first-of-its-kind data processing technique, known as the field-particle correlation technique, to detail the interactions between electromagnetic fields and plasma particles inside solar wind.

"Plasma is by far the most abundant form of visible matter in the universe, and is often in a highly dynamic and apparently chaotic state known as turbulence," Christopher Chen, astrophysicist at Queen Mary University of London, said in a news release. "This turbulence transfers energy to the particles in the plasma leading to heating and energization, making turbulence and the associated heating very widespread phenomena in nature."

Chen and his colleagues shared their analysis of solar wind energization this week in the journal Nature Communications.

"In this study, we made the first direct measurement of the processes involved in turbulent heating in a naturally occurring astrophysical plasma," Chen said. "We also verified the new analysis technique as a tool that can be used to probe plasma energization and that can be used in a range of follow-up studies on different aspects of plasma behavior."

The new research showed Landau damping is present even among the complex electromagetnic fields and plasma waves found streaming through interstellar space.

"In the process of Landau damping, the electric field associated with waves moving through the plasma can accelerate electrons moving with just the right speed along with the wave, analogous to a surfer catching a wave," said Greg Howes, professor at the University of Iowa. "This first successful observational application of the field-particle correlation technique demonstrates its promise to answer long-standing, fundamental questions about the behavior and evolution of space plasmas, such as the heating of the solar corona."