Contaminated water
can be cleaned up to varying levels of purity
with a new
artificial leaf. Credit: American Chemical Society
(January 6, 2015) For
years, scientists have been pursuing ways to imitate a leaf’s photosynthetic
power to make hydrogen fuel from water and sunlight. In a new twist, a team has
come up with another kind of device that mimics two of a leaf’s processes —
photosynthesis and transpiration — to harness solar energy to purify water.
Their development, reported in the journal ACS Applied Materials &
Interfaces, could help address issues of water scarcity.
More than 1 billion people around the world live in areas
where clean water is hard to come by, and that number will likely rise as the
population grows. One possible solution to the shortage is to clean up
wastewater or other water sources that would otherwise not be drinkable or
usable for agriculture. But methods to scrub contaminants from water mostly
rely on conventional energy sources. To address the water problem without
adding to the dependence on fossil fuels, Peng Tao, Wen Shang and colleagues developed
a way to purify water by copying the way green leaves work.