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If a new technology from Sandia National Laboratories pans out, the next environmentally friendly fuel could come from a very strange source — air pollution.

Sandia is close to finishing a prototype device that, using solar energy, can split the pollutant and greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into oxygen and carbon monoxide, a building block chemical for many types of fuel.

The first step will be to use the gadget on industrial waste streams, such as carbon dioxide waste from coal plants, smokestacks and breweries, said Rich Diver, an engineer working on the project.

But the overall goal is to pull carbon dioxide out of the air and recycle it back into fuel — essentially closing what scientists call the "carbon loop" so that no new carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere, he said.

"The idea is to re-energize carbon dioxide so it can be recycled as fuel at least two times," Diver said. "If you did it in a big enough scale you could power all our cars with this," eventually, he said.

The device uses solar heat to split the carbon dioxide chemically. It was originally designed to split out hydrogen and oxygen from water, but splitting carbon dioxide could be a more useful function for it, Diver said.

Using the technology now, it would cost $30 to $50 to convert one ton of carbon dioxide into fuel and oxygen. And that's not feasible as an alternative energy source yet, said Ellen Stechel, the project manager.

"We need to get the cost below $20 a ton, but we're pretty early on in the technology effort," Stechel said. It will be at least a decade — probably more like 20 years — before it becomes a viable alternative energy source, she said.

Still, since carbon monoxide would be used to create liquid fuel and could be used in existing engines, it would be easier to set up a fuel infrastructure using the technology than it would be to switch the nation over to hydrogen-powered cars and other devices, Diver said.

"We already have an infrastructure based on liquid fuels, and hydrogen is a gas," Diver said. "(Hydrogen) has the highest energy content on a weight basis, but on a volume basis it's very poor. What that means is using hydrogen you might have to refill your tank every 30 to 40 miles."

The carbon monoxide fuels wouldn't have that problem, he said.

"Eventually, we could conceivably produce gasoline from this for as little as $3 a gallon," Diver said. "That's probably 20 years away."

The end product would have a double bonus, however, providing both an alternative to the nation's reliance on fossil fuels and reducing the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.

"If we get to where we're really recycling carbon dioxide and getting it out of the atmosphere, you essentially have an alternative fuel that is truly carbon neutral," Stechel said. "This would be a really, truly closed cycle form of gasoline, and then we don't have to worry about the carbon dioxide anymore."