How Today's Molecule Splitting Processes Work
Today, the molecule splitting processes are not perfected yet. Currently, scientists are successfully able to split a Carbon Dioxide molecule into carbon and oxygen, but there is a catch. They use a high energy vacuum ultraviolet laser (HEVUVL). The HEVUVL required a lot of energy, and a lot of energy meant that it costs a lot of money.
Since Carbon is double bonded to the Oxygen atoms, it would require much less energy to break one oxygen atom bond instead of two. Also, CO (Carbon Monoxide) is more stable than regular Carbon, making that another reason CO2 will split up this way. In order to avoid this, by giving the CO2 molecule more energy, the molecule will start to “roam”, which is a chemical phenomenon where chemical bonds break up in different ways. By doing this, CO2 will be separated into Carbon and 2 parts Oxygen, which is what we want.