Carbon Dioxide Absorption

hello,

first of all, i dare say that no body as far as i know do anything like that.so what i may say is before thinking about the tree, we have to think what we done until there is a green house effect happening to our earth. why cant we just stop from there. yes, we have dont it, but how effective the campaign are?

Where did you go to school? Learn to write correctly!

Amanda please ignore Prometheusone's insensitive remark. Clearly English is not your primary language and after struggling to learn Chinese I can sympathise with your difficulties in expressing your ideas in a foriegn language.

To examine your question (and I'll paraphrase);what have we done to get a greenhouse effect? The answer; We industrialized the world which required (and still requires)massive energy consumption.

There are no precedents for the level of energy consumption we now experience. We use more energy in one day than that our great grandfathers used in a year.

Energy is mankind's narcotic. We are addicted to the levels of energy consumption which maintain our lifestyles. Heat is the easiest source of energy to use and the easiest way to get it is to burn something.

Our ancestors used wood as their primary energy source. Our primary energy sources are petroleum and coal. Both require burning to produce energy.

Other energy producing sources such as atomic energy produce no "greenhouse" gases however the potential for Chernoble disasters still exist which makes public acceptance problematical. Solar, wind, hydroelectric and geothermal sources offer promise but only hydroelectric has really been developed to maturity.

There seems to be no acceptable substitute for our energy dependent lifestyles. Not very many people in today's world would consider returning to the level of existence our forefathers experienced.

We must develop means to restore earth's climatic balance. It is becoming more evident mankind is responsible for much of the earth's climatic changes. Repairing this damage is our challenge. Failure to meet this challenge may result in an uninhabitable world.

Just to throw my two sense in... there is an article published on Harvard Forests that hypothesizes that the sequestered carbon by a mature forest is negligible... throughout the globe only new revegetation has shown any, though still minute, amount of sequestered carbon.

In the US we have to stop burning coal to make electricity. Biofuels need to be replaced by electric vehicles. Nuclear energy is pretty safe with todays knowledge and technology. We need only stop burying spent uranium rods in Yuka mountain and recycle them as they do in other countries.

Obviously fast growing species will be more effective in removing CO2 as they require it as a carbon source for growth. Likewise, plants that are strong oxygenators are also good at removing CO2. Also certain species of plants grow well together and will reinforce one another, while others will compete and kill one another. The best person to advise you would be a botanist.

As for using plants as a fuel source, my own personal opinion would be to grind them up and ferment them. Reason? Recycling. Fermentation releases methane gas, which is a clean burning fuel releasing only water vapor and CO2 as byproducts. Since the CO2 released originally came from plants that removed them from the atmosphere, there will not be a net increase in atmospheric carbon content. Also, the residual solids can be used for fertilizer. Another useful way is to grow high oil content grain such as corn for food, then recycle the used cooking oil extracted from them to form biodiesel. Again, this will help reduce atmospheric carbon content.

fast growing species, absorb carbon fast and tend to rot fast. So now you have a short cycle of grow and trap carbon, decay and release carbon, grow and... Also, climatic conditions effect a species performance.

There was a show recently on Discovery featuring I think a Canadian company that had developed quite an extensive CO2 absorption program using algae beds and sunlight. It consumed virtually no power and the CO2 was captured in the plant material which was sold for a profit.

What I have read lately about algae seems very promising. It appears to be the most efficient plant for absorption of Co2 per unit space, and that is being enhanced with solar collection to be more efficient with an even smaller footprint. And it is apparently an excellent raw material for producing biodiesel.

You would be astonished on the effectivity of the amazonian forests: it has been found that plants close the breathing system from certain temperatures on, this to save water that is evaporating. This effect takes down the CO₂ absortion in hot sunny areas enormously.

Northern woods don't have this effect and continue to grow all day long.

Who is going to determine what the level of CO2 should be, assuming we could reduce the current levels? Is it even possible to reach a static state? Certainly the consequences of a swing to global cooling are worth consideration.

Multiplying the ocean's CO2 guzzlers: This article is displayed on BBC. On BBC website search for CO2. There there are few research article. Most interesting one is artificial tree. For bio absorption, fast growing plants is one suggestion. Animal feed such as Lucerne (Alfalfa) that grows round the year. Bio fertiliser to grow animal feed is a near enough close cycle. This plant will grow in most climates provided there is water.

If I'm not mistaken the best way to limit the amount of CO2 produced from soils is to practice non-tilling agriculture processes. Which limits the yield on the crop. No Soil that I know of actually sequesters any significant amount of CO2. Tilling soil actually releases CO2 into the atmosphere. As proven by research at wood hole institute there is a very limited sink of CO2 into the terrestrial reservoir. The oceans continue to be the dominant sink. Fluctuations of the increase of atmospheric CO2 are seasonal with minute rate changes tied to climate patterns and not the increase of biofuel products. Biofuels create more greenhouse gases when compared to octane on an energy normalized basis. Biofuels will only increase mans burden on the environment and allow us to pollute for a longer period of time. The combustion engine is obsolete.

If we are destined to use this technology it should not be harvested from a crop but rather use cellulose / wood dust / chips from saw mills, paper mills and other fibrous processing plants. This would eliminated upstream costs of farming and is cheaper to convert to ethanol than corn or other harvested crops.

First, I think the use of the word sequester above is very ambiguous. For instance, the idea of soil sequestration of carbon dioxide. There are higher levels of carbon and carbon dioxide in the soil, and soil slows the transport of carbon dioxide (formed from the process of decay of organic plant materials) into the atmosphere and temporarily traps some. Additionally some soil mineral react in the presence of water and carbon dioxide to form long term carbonate minerals (the most effective form of sequestration for carbon). Also, since all higher life is built primarily on carbon and water, all life must sequester some carbon until it decays. What plants do is convert a specific carbon source, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, to cellular carbon. Plants however still live aerobically and process oxygen (they do breathe air at night for oxygen). There is a carbon balance on the planet. However, some forms of carbon are relatively unavailable to promote increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere without human intervention. These unavailable forms are geologic not biologic, e.g. limestone, dolostone, petroleum, etc.. Limestone and dolostone as examples form carbon dioxide sinks on geologic scale. When you process limestone you release all the trapped carbon from millions of years ago, i.e. make portland cement, plaster or most any other thing that has Calcium in it. Plants are really just atmospheric scrubbers that make the carbon directly available for biological use over a very short period of time (years). This is not the same as other (Geologic) systems that remove atmospheric carbon and sequester it for millions of years. Plants die and much of that mass, even when we harvest portions of the plant, decays to cycle carbon dioxide back within a few years. So when we talk about sequestration we need to be cognizant of the timescale we are discussing. The Carbon Dioxide that is removed today by biological systems is fequently back in just a few years, the faster it decays the faster it gets back into the atmosphere.

I applaud your comment. On a long term basis the only sequestering of carbon that takes place in terrestrial environments is the formation of newly forested areas. In this case you may think of a forest as a small reservoir of carbon on a global scale with a short residence time and high flux rate. I'm not completely well versed on processing of portland cement but i do believe a good amount of the carbon from limestones and dolomite is trapped in the finished product. The biggest issue we face is finding an alternate fuel source. Biofuels is not an answer.

Also, as far as nitrogen fixation and mineralization of carbon dioxide in soils, isnt this the true source of carbon for growing vegetation? Released by root growth and soil organic matter? Photosynthesis is a poorly understood process and it is also believed that CO2 might be a secondary product... of course behind oxygen in the formation of new plant tissue.

The later point I make greatly questions the sequestering of carbon by corn crops used for biofuels. No doubt carbon in corn harvests produces ethanol after processing. Who practices non tilling agricultural processes and does not fertilize and water their plants? If carbon was solely sequestered from the atmosphere, crop rotation and fertilization would be less abundant in practice.

Other worthy notes: E85 contains? Fertilizers are produced by what raw materials?

Have you looked into the interesting site: www.eprida.com

They have a novel method to take organic waste and turn it into a carbon assimulating fertillizer. Check their unique process out at the above website.

taejonkwando....'not very many people in todays world would consider returning to the kind of existence our forefathers experienced' thats a grim view girl,DO YOU THINK WE'D BE THRUST BACK TO THAT WITH THE COLLECTIVE KNOWLEDGE WE POSSESS TODAY ? old world industrialisation has got us in this mess...bin the dirty ways of making power. start converting now ,dont wait until its too late and they are switching off the power stations because we cant breathe...get looking at the ALTERNATIVES... ... solar technology has been taken on by the Amish im led to believe....if they can be convinced of the power of the sun then this idea could be sold to every living person on the planet..there are undeveloped peoples out there who have little or no energy consumption to speak of...they more than get by...do we really need all the things we make? we send most of them to landfill eventually....tvs could be made with a wooden carcase instead of plastic...grow more trees etc etc lots of things could be made from wood ....were going to HAVE TO invest in the clean future technologies if we want to minimise our impact ...we are focusing on the wrong things at the moment. shallow thinking is fuelling the demand and were all hooked on it ...no votes to the government that tries to change it..thats why they aint...its up to you THE CONSUMER to act ..together we have the biggest voice..get reading about solar and wind systems/hybrid systems/build your own ...get this technology moving before its too late....

as far as trying to absorb CO2.... tackle OUR problem by minimising the CO2 production at source as far as is reasonably practicable. if they made a wooden tv would you buy one?

I would be interested in knowing if any research has been done in this area as well, specifically into the absorption of Carbon by a plant in standard atmosphere and temperature environments. Such as: Leaf lettuce at 1 atmosphere and 20C will absorb Xppm of CO2 during daylight hours and Expire Xppm CO2 and O2 at night.

I have read a few articles about increasing plant growth by artificially increasing the concentration of CO2 during daylight hours.

If anyone knows of someone or some group that is doing research of some similar type, I think it would be interesting to find out. This type of research would lend itself very well to colonization of harsh environments, like space and the moon.