"Bionic Leaf Sucks Up Carbon Dioxide As It Makes Liquid Fuel"

"A team of scientists at Harvard University says it has come up with a bionic leaf — a system that could use solar power and hydrogen-eating bacteria to generate liquid fuel. The findings, described in the journal Science, offer an alternative path to making carbon-neutral solar fuels.

Part microbe and part machine, the bionic leaf marks a tenfold improvement on the researchers’ previous version and could be used to generate all kinds of products, from the precursors for bioplastics to fuel.

“This work is quite significant. ... The high performance of this system is unparalleled by any other CO2 reducing system,” Peidong Yang, a UC Berkeley chemist and MacArthur “genius” grant winner who was not involved in the paper, said in an email. “In addition, being able to do this at low pressures and at high oxygen concentrations represents another major advancement.”"

Amina Khan reports for the Los Angeles Times June 6, 2016.