Scientists say they have managed to create a new system that can create fuel out of sunlight and air. The new system is notable because it can work under field conditions, instead of controlled conditions of a laboratory.

The new system can come in handy to create carbon-neutral fuels for things such as aviation and shipping – but significant amounts of development and upscaling would be needed initially, the engineers note.

Is the system usable in real world?

The system is part of a broader attempt to create new processes that could help reduce the 8% of humanity’s carbon dioxide emissions that come from flying and shipping. One option is to make new drop-in fuels that would act as kerosene or diesel but are created synthetically, out of water and carbon dioxide, and powered by solar energy.

Scientists have had some success in creating the individual parts of such a system. But it has proven much harder to create the full thing, in a way that would be useable in real-world conditions. Engineers Aldo Steinfeld and his colleagues developed a working version of the system on the roof of ETH Zürich, the university where the research was done.

New green methods to create fuel

It was built using three pieces – an air capture unit that takes CO2 and water from the air, a solar unit that captures solar energy and uses it to turn those materials into a mixture of carbon monoxide and oxygen, and another unit that turns that gas into liquid so it can come in handy as fuel.

If the system were scaled up to be big enough, it could potentially satisfy the demand for the much less green kerosene that is currently used to power aviation and shipping markets.

Previously, engineers at the University of Cincinnati found a method of making fuel using greenhouse gases. The process has the potential to be able to create fuel both on Earth and Mars. If the process is perfected, it could be exactly what NASA wants to provide fuel for rockets and other uses on Mars’ surface for future human missions.