A graduate student at the Royal College of Art developed an artificial leaf

Man has long been looking into space, making the first timid attempts to go beyond the atmosphere of his planet, and settle on other planets. In this we can be helped by artificial plants that can absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen.

Julian Melchiorri, a graduate student at the Royal College of Art, developed a synthetic sheet capable of performing the functions of an ordinary green leaf: absorb CO2 and produce oxygen.
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The project is called the Silk Leaf Project, and its author recruited Tufts University employees. The project itself is part of the Innovation Design Engineering course.

An artificial leaf uses chloroplasts extracted from ordinary green plants. Chloroplasts are placed in a protein medium (silk), which allows chloroplasts not to coagulate, but to evenly distribute throughout the thickness of the liquid.



So far it is unclear how much such a sheet can reproduce oxygen, how much carbon dioxide to consume. It is also unknown what the term of work of such a "sheet". Nevertheless, the idea is interesting, and if it can still be used in NASA projects, then this is a huge plus for the project.



According to the authors of the project, the new development can be used in urban environments - for the consumption of CO2 and the production of oxygen. Here is how it might look.