University of Queensland scientists had a remarkable eureka moment when they accidentally turned the most common greenhouse gas into electricity.

By using positive and negative ions of different sizes, the team created electricity from CO2, and now believes that their ‘nanogenerators' could help improve the reputation of the simple molecule.

Now thoroughly demonized, it pays to remember that carbon dioxide contains two oxygen molecules and one carbon molecule, which rank among the most fundamental building blocks of the universe and are used in human society for thousands of processes and purposes.

Univ. of Queensland research officer Dr. Zhuyuan Wang, from the Dow Center for Sustainable Engineering Innovation, was working on a nanogenerator that ran on a process called ion transport for three years when one day, according to Brisbane Times, he saw it was consuming CO2 in the laboratory air to make electricity.

"I double-checked everything and it was working correctly so I started dreaming about changing the world using this technology," he told the Times.

"We could make a slightly bigger device that is portable to generate electricity to power a mobile phone or a laptop computer using CO2 from the atmosphere," he said.

In the research project, Wang and his team needed to double check it was the CO2 that was powering the nanogenerator, so they sealed it in a box and pumped CO2 into it.

The devices were just 4×6 centimeters, but the team theorized that a larger one could provide meaningful powerful supplies to office electronics.

Dr. Wang's colleague, Xiwang Zhang, said they would continue to refine the technology through the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for Green Electrochemical Transformation of Carbon Dioxide.

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