Scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have come up with a way to convert water into fuel using sunlight and an oxide of a naturally-occurring rare earth metal. Professor Sossina Haile and her team from Caltech were able to utilize cerium oxide to act as a renewable and inexpensive catalyst, effectively converting water or carbon dioxide into hydrogen or carbon monoxide.
Published in the journal Science, the report on the new fuel device explains that it uses cerium oxide to strip oxygen out of water and essentially convert it into a usable, liquid fuel. This is accomplished by heating water to over 1,600 degrees Celsius, or over 2,900 degrees Fahrenheit, in the presence of the catalyst. And the conversion process does not deplete the cerium oxide, so the metal can be reused hundreds of times without being damaged. Read more
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