Back to nature for green energy

An international team of researchers led by Monash University has used chemicals found in plants to replicate a key process in photosynthesis, paving the way for a new approach that uses sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.

The breakthrough could revolutionise the renewable energy industry by making hydrogen -- touted as the clean, green fuel of the future -- cheaper and easier to produce on a commercial scale.

Professor Leone Spiccia, Mr Robin Brimblecombe and Dr Annette Koo from Monash University teamed with Dr Gerhard Swiegers at the CSIRO and Professor Charles Dismukes at Princeton University to copy nature, developing a coating that can be impregnated with a form of manganese, a chemical essential to sustaining photosynthesis.

"A manganese cluster is central to a plant's ability to use water, carbon dioxide and sunlight to make carbohydrates and oxygen," Professor Spiccia said.

"Man-made mimics of this cluster have been developed but we've taken it a step further, harnessing the ability of these molecules to convert water into its component elements, oxygen and hydrogen."

"This process of 'oxidising' water generates protons and electrons, which can be converted into hydrogen gas instead of carbohydrates.

"Hydrogen has long been considered the ideal clean green fuel, energy-rich and carbon-neutral. The production of hydrogen using nothing but water and sunlight offers the possibility of an abundant, renewable, green source of energy for the future for communities across the world."