In high school I was pretty interested in developing a mechanical leaf that would create glucose and convert CO2 to oxygen. If it worked well enough it could be scaled up and filter a large amount of CO2 and the glucose can be used for various things. Glucose is a simple sugar which means it is easy for the body to convert. Sucrose, dextrose, and fructose are complex sugars which makes them harder for the body to process.

Chlorophyll is a green tint that filters wavelengths of light. The wavelengths that made it through would react with the CO2 and water that creates the byproduct of sugar and oxygen.

In the design you see water is piped into a tank under chlorophyll. There were a few options for how to make the chlorophyll. One option was to take leaves or grass and puree it into a water or alcohol solution. Other options were to use food coloring in water that was green or tint the clear panel to a green color.

The CO2 cartridge was the same canister used for the butane torch that was at Radio Shack. It would allow me to release the CO2 at speeds I wanted to release it at as well as turn it off and on at will. Most CO2 cartridges were used for paintball guns and I was not able to get any hardware from those that was within financial or purchasing reach.

When oxygen was processed it would float to the top of the processing tank. The oxygen then would get filtered through a rubber membrane submerged in water. This filters things further and has a chance at helping to separate the oxygen. That was the idea at least at the time. Glucose would process down into the glucose tank as it is heavier and the water would float on the top.

I was guessing quite a bit at what was going and mixed that with the research I did do on the subject. Many of the assumptions didn’t turn out to be correct. Inventing and not knowing if a design is perfect can be rewarding in that you learn through trial and error and the build experience. You learn a lot of extra little details you wouldn’t know if you wouldn’t have gone through the entire thing to see what would happen.

It was going to be a fun project for a science fair but when I went to Radio Shack to pick up the CO2 and butane torch I would put the CO2 into, they were out of those components.

How Photosynthesis ACTUALLY Works

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Mechanical Leaf Sketch

Mechanical Leaf That Works

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