Plants may help artificial oil hunt

Published on Saturday 18 February 2012 01:42

AN OIL substitute made with “artificial leaf” technology could be powering cars, ships and planes in 30 years, according to a leading Scottish expert.

Scientists have applied a new twist to the process of photosynthesis by which plants harness the energy of sunlight.

Instead of producing organic material from carbon dioxide, they plan to manufacture hydrocarbon fuel from photosynthesising bacteria.

This has been tried before, with little success, but the University of Glasgow team has discovered that the process could be driven by electricity instead of light.

Professor Richard Cogdell, who heads the research team, believes the greater efficiency this achieves could make the technology a major energy source in decades to come.

He said: “Most renewable energy sources make electricity. That’s fine, but we have no good ways of storing electricity, and it’s intermittent. What you need is to be able to lock that energy up in some sort of storage fluid that’s available on demand, and that’s what fuel is.

“To sustain our way of life after the oil runs out we have to be able to make, renewably and sustainably, dense portable fuels for transport, especially for aeroplanes and ships.

“We’re looking at photosynthesis to see whether we can learn to copy it in a more robust and efficient way.”