The Harvard Research Institute staff reported about the establishment of the technology, which allows manufacturing the fuel oil from the solar light.
The essence of the innovation is to use a device called an "artificial sheet" decomposing the water into oxygen and hydrogen under the sunlight. Thereafter, hydrogen is transforming into isopropanol – the simplest secondary aliphatic monohydric alcohol. Carbon dioxide and special bacteria Ralstonia eutropha are using in this process.
Daniel Nocher, the inventor of the device, said about the extremely low cost of its components. However, he has not planned industrial use of the invention yet, because today the bacteria is transforming only 1% of the total amount of used solar energy into the fuel. The next step is to increase this figure to at least to 5%.
