{"id":23046,"date":"2018-03-26T08:39:56","date_gmt":"2018-03-26T12:39:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sciencescosmaincms.cm.ucf.edu\/news\/?p=23046"},"modified":"2018-04-04T10:52:36","modified_gmt":"2018-04-04T14:52:36","slug":"could-this-toy-help-save-our-planet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sciences.ucf.edu\/news\/could-this-toy-help-save-our-planet\/","title":{"rendered":"Could This Toy Help Save Our Planet?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Robert Stephens<\/p>\n<p><strong>UCF Professor Fernando Uribe-Romo is merging his love for chemistry and nature to create a new form of energy \u2014 artificial photosynthesis \u2014 that actually cleans air.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0px 0px 16px; color: #333333; text-indent: 0px; letter-spacing: normal; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; background-color: #ffffff;\">The conversation is supposed to be about deep topics like renewable energy, global warming and scientific methods. But less than a minute in, Fernando Uribe-Romo has a confession: \u201cI feel like a kid in a toy room.\u201d Uribe-Romo is 34, an assistant professor of chemistry at UCF, and the toy room he refers to is his lab on campus. As he tells his students, \u201cThere is no telling what you can do here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Can photosynthesis power our lives? | Fernando Uribe-Romo | TEDxSedona\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/qGMl9KmS9xs?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Exhibit A: Just look what Uribe-Romo has done.<\/p>\n<p>Using the same ingenuity that he once used when playing with Tinkertoys, Uribe-Romo recently developed a material and a method to produce artificial photosynthesis. In other words, he discovered a way to draw CO2 from the environment and turn it into a fuel using energy provided by the sun. To back it down one more notch, it is adapting and improving what plants were created to do. The development has caused such a stir that Uribe-Romo was asked to present it at a TEDx Talk in October.<\/p>\n<p>The man who conducted research at five universities in three countries before coming to UCF in 2013 says, \u201cI didn\u2019t set out to change the world.\u201d But the former Boy Scout\u00a0has\u00a0always wanted to leave the world better than he found it.<\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/today.ucf.edu\/files\/2018\/03\/260299831-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"433\" \/><\/p>\n<p>(Photo by Steven Diaz)<\/p>\n<p>Robert Stephens: Artificial photosynthesis. It sounds like a collision of nature and imitation.<\/p>\n<p>Fernando Uribe-Romo: Actually, chemistry can hold the answer to many of our sustainability problems. But we have to start by studying nature first. Nature gives us the best ideas. Then we use chemistry to make adjustments and perfect what nature is doing.<\/p>\n<p>RS: So how are you improving the natural process of photosynthesis?<\/p>\n<p>FUR: We create materials in the lab by organizing their atoms into specific Tinkertoy formations, so the material can absorb CO2 and store it more efficiently than a plant can do. The CO2 can then be converted into energy using sunlight. Being able to organize atoms and see these types of results is a dream for chemists like me.<\/p>\n<p>RS: What are these materials you\u2019re creating in the lab? Are they like plants?<\/p>\n<p>FUR: No. They\u2019re compounds called Metal\u2013Organic Frameworks, or MOFs. They\u2019re like nano-sponges, with a honeycomb surface that attracts CO2 from the atmosphere. Imagine an adsorbent surface area the size of six tennis courts, all condensed into the size of a spoonful. That\u2019s how efficient these MOFs are.<\/p>\n<p>RS: What\u2019s the name of the MOF you\u2019re using?<\/p>\n<p>FUR: They\u2019re constantly being created, so the only way to name them is after the school where the MOF is first made. The one we\u2019re using started at a university in France, but we\u2019ve done so much adjusting to its properties that we\u2019ll name future materials after UCF later this year.<\/p>\n<p>RS: If you could see 50 years ahead, how would you see people using your MOF in homes?<\/p>\n<p>FUR: There\u2019s no telling. Maybe the MOF would be integrated in the paint. You paint the exterior and let the house do photosynthesis and collect usable energy.<\/p>\n<p>RS: Realistically, what would be the cost of implementing artificial photosynthesis into the mainstream, compared with solar or wind or nuclear power?<\/p>\n<p>FUR: It shouldn\u2019t be an either-or solution. To solve our environmental issues, we need a bigger portfolio of energy solutions. It\u2019s all of us working together, including the oil and power companies. No one can just tell the oil and power companies to turn everything off. We\u2019re actually working on another project with the help of a grant from the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative \u2014 an agency funded by BP. There could be a day when power companies utilize artificial photosynthesis to reuse CO2 emissions from the burning of fuel. They\u2019d create energy in a carbon neutral process.<\/p>\n<p>RS: Helping nature do its work.<\/p>\n<p>FUR: Yes. The plant life on earth can only do so much to restore the CO2 levels to non-threatening levels. We need to work with nature more than anything else.<\/p>\n<p>RS: How did a chemist become so interested in nature?<\/p>\n<p>FUR: Chemistry starts with nature. That\u2019s how my personal story goes, growing up in Ensenada, Mexico, on the Baja Peninsula. I was a Boy Scout, loved being in the forest and mountains and beaches. When I was doing research in upstate New York, I\u2019d walk a mile and a half through the forest to get to my lab. My thirst for enjoying the beauty of nature makes me want to understand it more \u2014 and to help it however we can.<\/p>\n<p>RS: Is that your ultimate motivation?<\/p>\n<p>FUR: Honestly, I\u2019m just a kid who likes building new toys. It\u2019s like, \u201cLook what I can do!\u201d And now look what the toy can do: It can make our world better.<\/p>\n<p>To read original story <a href=\"https:\/\/today.ucf.edu\/could-this-toy-help-save-our-planet\/\">click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Robert Stephens UCF Professor Fernando Uribe-Romo is merging his love for chemistry and nature to create a new form of energy \u2014 artificial photosynthesis \u2014 that actually cleans air. The conversation is supposed to be about deep topics like renewable energy, global warming and scientific methods. But less than a minute in, Fernando Uribe-Romo [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":23149,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[35,38,39,13,28,29,1],"tags":[5551,1263],"class_list":["post-23046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chemistry-departments","category-breaking-news","category-faculty-news","category-news","category-top-news","category-ucf-news","category-uncategorized","tag-artificial-photosynthesis","tag-fernando-uribe-romo"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Could This Toy Help Save Our Planet? - College of Sciences News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sciences.ucf.edu\/news\/could-this-toy-help-save-our-planet\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Could This Toy Help Save Our Planet? - College of Sciences News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Robert Stephens UCF Professor Fernando Uribe-Romo is merging his love for chemistry and nature to create a new form of energy \u2014 artificial photosynthesis \u2014 that actually cleans air. 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