Artificial Photosynthesis: Turning Sunlight, Water and CO2 into Fuel

Artificial photosynthesis replaces a leaf's biological machinery with engineered semiconductor photoelectrodes and catalysts. Sunlight drives two linked half-reactions inside a photoelectrochemical cell: water is oxidized into oxygen, protons and electrons on one side, while those electrons and protons reduce captured CO₂ into a usable fuel — methanol, syngas or other hydrocarbons — on the other. This simulator models a working cell so you can see how sunlight intensity, photoelectrode capture efficiency, electrolyzer efficiency and catalyst choice change the solar-to-fuel efficiency, the daily fuel output and how much CO₂ the plant actually processes.

Why the numbers compound down

Real plants convert well under 1% of incoming sunlight into stored chemical energy; the best engineered photoelectrochemical systems have reported laboratory efficiencies above 15-19% for hydrogen. But once you chain solar capture with electrolyzer losses and then with the selectivity of the CO₂-reduction catalyst, the realistic system-level number for a liquid fuel is much lower — which is exactly what the three sliders and the catalyst toggle above let you explore.