Millions of island-like solar farms could help suck CO2 from the atmosphere and repurpose the gas into synthetic fuel, say researchers.
In a new paper, scientists from Norway and Switzerland propose the construction of 11 million ‘marine-based artificial islands,’ each as big as a football field, to help mitigate the disastrous effects of carbon-based fossil fuels.
To achieve their goal, the futuristic ‘islands’ would come equipped with a host of technologies, some existing and some not.
Using photovoltaic cells, for example, researchers say the giant hubs could convert sunlight into electricity, which would then be used to power the extraction of hydrogen and CO2 from seawater.
In a catalytic process, these fuels — hydrogen and CO2 — would then be combined to form methanol which could be used as a fuel for other purposes — powering cars, boats, and other fossil fuel-based machines.
Researchers say that the proposal offers a ‘net-zero’ alternative to using fossil fuels that repurposes as much fuel as it generates.
The method is described in a new paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
While the scientists say their proposal is feasible, it is, by their own admission, nothing short of ambitious.
Islands would have to be clustered in groups of 70 and would cover about one square kilometer, or about half of a mile. The floating clusters would have to be situated in relatively mild waters to avoid giant waves and hurricanes.
Among the potential locations would be oceans in near Southeast Asia, Australia, and the Arabian Gulf, say scientists.
Other more fundamental obstacles in bringing the floating fuel conversion farms to fruition is the actual science behind the process.
As reported by Newsweek, researchers are still currently trying to build a device capable of separating CO2 from seawater at scale.
‘[The] biggest challenge is the development of a large scale device to extract CO2 from seawater,’ the study’s author, Andreas Borgschulte, told Newsweek.
‘This process is the only one of the total system [that] has not yet been fully developed. All others exist already on an industrial scale.’
One expert interviewed by Forbes also highlighted the fact that the process of harnessing carbon from seawater would also likely be expensive, making companies less apt to fund efforts.
‘The other components needed for the idea, are extracting CO2 from sea water and then turning this into fuel. This part would be very energy intensive and costly,’ Henry Snaith, Professor of Physics at Oxford University, told Forbes.
‘Work on creating fuels from electricity – as opposed to directly from sunlight – are massively important. This will ultimately enable solar and wind to produce 100 percent of our power needs and should be encouraged.’
The proposal of building millions of high-tech floating islands capable of repurposing seawater into fuel may seem grandiose, but researchers aren’t alone in their line of thought.
Recently, other similarly novel approaches using CO2 extracted from the atmosphere to create liquid fuels have a been proposed.
In a paper published in Nature Communications by researchers from Germany and Canada, experts say that by retrofitting air-conditioners with existing technology, the devices could pull carbon dioxide from the air and use the captured compound to produce synthetic liquid fuels.
Like the island idea, however, the idea contends with questions of cost, the amount of space needed, and whether or not people would be receptive to such systems in the first place.