Progress report for
Renewable Energy from Coral and Karstic Formation
Achievement at a glance
As it appears, energy generation, conversion and storage from a process called "reversible reaction" pioneered by the French chemist, Claude Louis Berthollet, can be possible.The ability of the coral and karstic formation in many parts of the world's ocean to absorb high-intense energy has the huge potential to tap a large source of energy from the sun. A greater part of coral and karstic formation is made up of calcium carbonate or CaCo3.
CaCO3 has a wide bandgap of 5.5eV making it a good potential for energy generation.
Based on discussion with fellow researcher, if we aim to have an artificial system that mimics plant photosynthesis, we should be able to satisfy the following issues:
(1) the active material, in this case CaCO3 as proposed, should be able to photocatalytically split water into hydrogen and oxygen;
(2) CaCO3 should also be able to perform light-driven reduction of carbon dioxide to hydrocarbons;
(3) the active material should be able to perform the said functions in a wide spectrum of light (not just UV) to make the system more efficient.
We want to confirm first if CaCO3 can photocatalytically split water and reduce carbon dioxide. As a researcher, I have a firm belief that the whole process reduces carbon dioxide which could contribute to the deterrent of ocean acidification.
However, the objective remains to harness the huge amount of high-intense energy that penetrates and covers the world ocean, reduce carbon dioxide via the said process that will result to a potentially vast amount of energy from high-intense sunlight that reaches the oceans.
The goal, therefore, is to come up with a prototype that will demonstrate the idea and convert it into an innovative technology for future use
As the study aims to measure material deposition, absorption and transport and electron scattering in the lattice and during interaction with coral tissue, as well as the investigation of chemical and physical processes involved, laboratory support is needed.
At of this writing, the author doesn't have the resources to continue and pursue the scientific investigation in a laboratory set-up.