Billion Tons Of Carbon Dioxide Research Articles

A new model for the biochemistry of pectin synthesis: GAUTs synthesize diverse HG glycans in structurally and functionally distinct plant cell wall polymers

Each year more than 100 billion tons of carbon dioxide are fixed via photosynthesis into plant biomass, the base of our food chain and a renewable resource for production of chemicals, fuels, materials and bio‐based products. The bulk of plant biomass is plant cell walls, which have evolved during hundreds of millions of years of biotic and abiotic challenge into very complex polymers that support plant longevity up to thousands of years and provide mechanical strength needed for trees to reach heights of 90 meters. Such striking mechanical and physical properties arise from the fine structure of individual wall polymers, the covalent and non‐covalent interactions between them, and the architectural arrangement between the polymers. Among the three major types of cell wall polysaccharides, cellulose, hemicellulose and pectin, pectin is the most complex. Pectin is comprised of the three pectic polysaccharides, homogalacturonan (HG), rhamnogalacturonan I (RG‐I) and rhamnogalacturonan II (RG‐II). Our research focuses on the synthesis of the most abundant pectic polysaccharide, HG, which is a partially methyl‐esterified and acetylated homoglycan of α‐1,4‐linked D‐galacturonic acid. HG is synthesized by the GAUT gene family of 15 proven and putative HG:α‐1,4‐galacturonosyltransferases (HG:GalATs) in Arabidopsis. This family has expanded in grasses and in trees. Our long term goal is to understand which HG glycans are synthesized by the diverse GAUTs, and how the polymers containing these HG glycans contribute to cell wall structure, integrity, plant growth, cell adhesion and plant development. The current biochemical, transgenic and mutant studies showing that at least 6 of the 15 Arabidopsis GAUTs encode HG:GalATs will be summarized and data in support of the hypothesis that different GAUTs synthesize HG glycan regions in unique polymers with different functions in the wall will be presented. Enzymatic properties of a heterologously expressed GAUT1:GAUT7 HG:GalAT complex will be described and a two‐phase model for the non‐processive biosynthesis of homogalacturonan polysaccharides by the GAUT1:GAUT7 complex will be presented. We show that the GAUT1:GAUT7 complex is a distributive glycosyltransferase that catalyzes polymerization of high‐molecular‐weight polysaccharides and has full activity only with acceptors longer than a critical chain length.Support or Funding InformationResearch was supported by USDA AFRI 2010‐65115‐20396 and the BioEnergy Science Center and the Center for Bioenergy Innovation which are US Department of Energy Bioenergy Research Centers supported by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research in the Department of Energy's Office of Science. Also partially funded by Department of Energy Center Grant DESC0015662.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.

Pollutant or resource? [carbon dioxide

The world will have to start removing 12 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the Earth's atmosphere every year by 2050 if it wants to limit global warming to the relatively safe 1.5°C compared to pre-industrial times, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The authors discusses six promising carbon reuse ideas already in development: turning it into rock, making cement out of it, feeding it to algae to make carbon fibre, turning it into insulation foam for housing, feeding it to algae to revive oyster reefs, and turning it into fuel. (4 pages)

Regulatory Induced Risk Aversion: Coal Procurement at U.S. Power Plants

This paper provides empirical evidence that U.S. power plants exhibit risk aversion when purchasing coal. Specifically, I show that plants facing more spot coal price uncertainty sign longer duration coal contracts, purchase contract coal from a larger number of origin counties, and pay higher contract coal prices. The trade-off between the mean versus standard deviation of coal purchase costs implied by my results is considerably larger than the Sharpe Ratios typically estimated for commodity futures. I posit that power plants exhibit an especially high degree of risk aversion because regulators are less likely to incorporate high fuel cost realizations into the output price they set for these plants. In 2017, U.S. coal-fired plants emitted 1.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide and 74% of coal-fired electricity production came from price-regulated plants. My results thus underscore the importance of accounting for risk aversion when designing environmental policy aimed at reducing carbon emissions,

Greenhouse gas emissions from tropical forest degradation: an underestimated source

BackgroundThe degradation of forests in developing countries, particularly those within tropical and subtropical latitudes, is perceived to be an important contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions. However, the impacts of forest degradation are understudied and poorly understood, largely because international emission reduction programs have focused on deforestation, which is easier to detect and thus more readily monitored. To better understand and seize opportunities for addressing climate change it will be essential to improve knowledge of greenhouse gas emissions from forest degradation.ResultsHere we provide a consistent estimation of forest degradation emissions between 2005 and 2010 across 74 developing countries covering 2.2 billion hectares of forests. We estimated annual emissions of 2.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide, of which 53% were derived from timber harvest, 30% from woodfuel harvest and 17% from forest fire. These percentages differed by region: timber harvest was as high as 69% in South and Central America and just 31% in Africa; woodfuel harvest was 35% in Asia, and just 10% in South and Central America; and fire ranged from 33% in Africa to only 5% in Asia. Of the total emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, forest degradation accounted for 25%. In 28 of the 74 countries, emissions from forest degradation exceeded those from deforestation.ConclusionsThe results of this study clearly demonstrate the importance of accounting greenhouse gases from forest degradation by human activities. The scale of emissions presented indicates that the exclusion of forest degradation from national and international GHG accounting is distorting. This work helps identify where emissions are likely significant, but policy developments are needed to guide when and how accounting should be undertaken. Furthermore, ongoing research is needed to create and enhance cost-effective accounting approaches.

GREENHOUSE GASES AND MEANS OF PREVENTION

The greenhouse effect can be defined as the consequence of increased heating of the Earth's surface, as well as the lower atmosphere by carbon dioxide, water vapor, and other trace amounts gases. It is well-known that human industrial activities have released large amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, about 900 billion tons of carbon dioxide, and it is estimated that up to 450 billion are still in the atmosphere. In comparison to greenhouse gases water vapor is one of the greatest contributors to the greenhouse effect on Earth. Many projects, as does the PURGE project, have tendences to build on the already conducted research and to quantify the positive and negative impacts on health and wellbeing of the population with greenhouse gas reduction strategies that are curently being implemented and should be increasingly applied in various sectors and urban areas, having offices in Europe, China and India. Acta Medica Medianae 2013;52(3):49-54.

Method of Converting Municipal Proportional Waste Plastics into Liquid Hydrocarbon Fuel by Using Activated Carbon

The demand for fossil fuel is at an all time high worldwide. Annually ~30 billion barrels of petroleum is being consumed worldwide. In this busy society, transportation is vital and, for transportation, petroleum is an obligation. All the major forms of business, agricultural, exports and imports depend on transportation. Transportation requires petroleum to function. Vehicles in the road require fuels, airway transportation requires Aviation fuel and sea transportation requires fuel oil. For not only transportation but also, petroleum is required to make all kind of daily usable plastics. Depletion of petroleum is inevitable at this current rate of consumption. Emissions released from evaporation and combustion of these fuel contributes to too many environmental and health problems; including emitting greenhouse gases that contribute immensely to global warming. Annually ~7 billion tons of carbon dioxide is released to the environment due to petroleum emission. Moreover, when the plastics are discarded into the landfill, it becomes waste plastic and since plastic is non-biodegradable, it can remain in the landfill for thousands of year. Waste plastics presence in the landfill causes environmental problems e.g., it can cause soil to decay. Alternative source of energy created from Solar, Wind, Hydrogen Fuel, Biomass Fuel, Bio-Diesel, Green Diesel, Bio-ethanol, and Geo-thermalhas been proposed as a solution to these problems. A developed process of thermally breaking down the hydrocarbon of chains of plastic has been studied and implemented to produce a liquid fuel in the presence of activated carbon. The activated carbon acts as a filter to absorb dye from the waste plastic during the thermal process to increase the quality of the final product. This fuel can be used for all kinds of transportation, and will emit much less emission compared to the current commercial fuel and it will be cost effective.

Performance, combustion, and emissions characteristics of a single-cylinder compression ignition engine operated on ethanol—biodiesel blended fuels

Fossil fuels such as oil, gas, and coal have driven the world's economies since the industrial revolution and have released carbon emissions in the process. About 26 billion tons of carbon dioxide are produced every year and this is still increasing. The 1997 Kyoto agreement is the world's only attempt to regulate carbon emissions. Diesel engines have been widely used as the major propulsion power sources because of their simple, robust construction coupled with high thermal efficiency and specific power output with high fuel economy. However, diesel engines are the major contributors of various types of air pollutants such as carbon monoxide (CO), oxides of nitrogen (NO x), particulate matter (PM), and other harmful compounds. The reduction in engine emissions is a major research objective in the engine development because of increasing concern for the environment pollution and more stringent government regulation on exhaust emissions. It is difficult to reduce PM and NO x simultaneously owing to the trade-off between PM and NO x [1]

Mitigating climate change through oil palm cultivation

Oil palm requires 7-11 times less land area than soyabean, rapeseed and sunflower to produce the same amount of oil. Therefore, the use of palm oil for food and biofuel, has saved 97-159 million ha of land from being deforested for cultivation with lower yielding oil crops. This has avoided 27-45 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2-e) emissions. Oil palm also sequesters eight times more CO2 than soyabean. As a biofuel, the use of palm biodiesel results in 62-82% Life Cycle Analysis Greenhouse Gas (LCA GHG) reduction when compared with fossil fuel.

Supercapacitors boost the fuel cell car

NO matter where you live it cannot have escaped your attention that our planet is struggling. There may be some who are sceptical but most of us can have little doubt that if we do not mend our ways, severe changes of global climate lie ahead. One of the most obvious major contributors to the deteriorating situation are the some 750 million registered vehicles worldwide that emit roughly 4 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year and contribute 15% to the anthropogenic emissions. In addition to their impact on the global climate, several other facts are motivating car manufacturers to investigate ways of reducing emissions drastically: declining oil reserves, their location in politically unstable regions, and health hazards posed by secondary emissions of nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons, and particulates. Today’s most promising solution for these problems would be cars powered by fuel cells with solar hydrogen as the ultimate energy carrier (cf preceeding article).However, a number of obstacles are delaying widespread adoption of this technology including high costs, the weight and volume of today’s fuel cells, security concerns related to hydrogen storage tanks, and the missing infrastructure needed for the production and distribution of hydrogen.

Global warming — facts, assessment, countermeasures

Global primary energy consumption amounts to 8.38 billion tonnes oil equivalent (OE) (1996) and is projected to increase by 1.3% per year for the industrialized countries and by up to 9.2% per year for the developing countries. Fossil energy's share was 7.541 billion tonnes OE in 1996 with rising tendency. The order of magnitude of proved reserves of fossil energy sources is 950 billion tonnes OE (1996), and certain present probable and possible reserves will become proved ones in the years to come. Fossil energy will, therefore, remain the number one energy source until far into the next century. The use of fossil energy produced 23.8 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO 2) in 1996 with oil and gas contributing about 60% to this figure. It is estimated that continued use of fossil energy will lead to an increase of the average global temperature by 1.0–3.5°C in the coming 50–100 years. Though the forecasts of future CO 2-emissions from fossil energy use as well as the magnitude of their influence on global warming are much disputed, the impact of CO 2-emissions on global warming itself is widely admitted. There is much dissense on the climatic consequences of global warming. It cannot be ruled out, however, that these consequences may be detrimental to mankind. This has in a sense of a “no regret policy” triggered substantial activity worldwide to decrease emission of greenhouse gases, especially of CO 2, and various attempts have been made to set binding limits for the emission of these gases. The harmonized worldwide implementation of CO 2-reduction strategies is, however, far from being realized. OECD-countries have made substantial progress in applying these strategies. Nevertheless, the contribution of the industrialized countries to worldwide CO 2-emissions is still over-proportionally large. The cost of developing and applying CO 2-reduction technologies are tremendous and prohibitive for most of the emerging economies. There is an obligation of the industrialized countries in their own interest to develop and make available these technologies wherever they are needed. The cost/efficiency ratio of CO 2-reduction measures must be a decisive criterion for their application. There are serious obstacles, though, to reducing CO 2-emissions while satisfying the energy needs of our world, e.g. lacking international harmonization, national needs and egoisms, rapid growth of world population and strongly increasing energy demand of emerging economies. In summing up, though an anthropogenic contribution to global warming cannot be proved for the time being, it cannot be ruled out forever. Therefore, internationally harmonized measures for CO 2-reduction have to be taken in the sense of a “no regret policy” to avert potential damage from mankind and, thus, contribute in this sense to a sustainable development with fossil energy.

Haze Clouds the Greenhouse

H igh above our heads, two kinds of pollution are waging a tug-ofwar over Earth's climate. Greenhouse gases, with their muchpublicized warming powers, hold decided advantage in this environmental struggle. But another form of pollution is showing unanticipated strength as it pulls against greenhouse forces, reducing rate of warming. Atmospheric experts have long suspected that sulfur haze same kind that obscures skylines in much of industrialized world could exert a cooling effect by reflecting sunlight. Yet they are only now recognizing sulfur's potential power. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently recognized importance of sulfur issue in its 1992 review, released in mid-January While international panel stood by its 1990 conclusion that greenhouse gas emissions are likely to raise Earth's temperature significantly it scaled back estimated warming rate, largely because of influence of sulfur pollution. The report concludes that the cooling effect of sulfur emissions may have offset a significant part of greenhouse warming in northern hemisphere during past several decades. One of U.S. participants in IPCC assessment, climate modeler Michael C. MacCracken of Lawrence Livermore (Calif.) National Laboratory, says panel included this point because newer studies have found sulfur emissions more significant than previously thought. It's a topic whose time has come, says Robert J. Charlson, an atmospheric scientist at University of Washington in Seattle who has long studied effects of sulfur pollution. F ormed during combustion of fossil fuels, sulfur pollution pours from same smokestacks and tailpipes that belch out 6 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year. The sulfur dioxide gas wafts into atmosphere, where it eventually turns into tiny sulfuric acid which can be either droplets or particles. Sulfur aerosols tug on climate in two ways one direct, other more subtle. Aerosols exert their most obvious effect by reflecting incoming solar radiation back toward space. They wield indirect climatic power by serving as nuclei around which water vapor can condense to form sunlight-reflecting cloud particles. In both cases, aerosol pollution acts as a giant shade, reducing amount of light reaching Earth's surface. Over last few years, Charlson and other atmospheric experts have gradually realized that aerosol effect warranted consideration. They wondered: Could sulfur shade actually block enough of sun's energy to slow greenhouse warming? To answer that question, researchers would need to estimate power of aerosols and compare it with that of greenhouse gases. Climate modelers have a reasonably good handle on greenhouse part of equation. Since beginning of Industrial Revolution, emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other gases have added about 2 to 2.5 watts of energy for each square meter of Earth's surface equivalent of hanging two Christmastree lights over every square meter of planet. The aerosol factor isn't nearly so clear. Charlson and six colleagues recently joined together to present a consensus statement-at least for United Stateson aerosols. In Jan. 24 SCIENCE, they estimate that direct influence of sulfur aerosols, averaged over globe, amounts to roughly 1 W/m2. The real value, they say could range from 0.5 to 2.0 W/m . The global average may have little meaning, though, because sulfur aerosols assert themselves most forcefully in northern hemisphere, which contributes 90 percent of world's sulfur pollution. Aerosols remain in atmosphere only a few days, so they haven't time to spread around world, unlike long-lasting greenhouse gases. Charlson and his colleagues estimate that sulfur effect over northern hemisphere may be double global average. For all uncertainty about sulfur's direct effect, climate researchers face an even more daunting task in gauging its indirect influence. Atmospheric scientists do not know to what extent aerosols increase number of particles within a cloud, one of critical determinants of how much sunlight clouds reflect. Charlson's group offers only a very rough estimate, proposing that indirect

The path of carbon in photosynthesis—Back to the future

F ive to ten billion tons of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel based energy production and from deforestation burnoff are entering the atmosphere annually. Suggested solutions to this massive accumulation include alternate energy sources, energy conservation, massive reforestation and, in the long term, increased use of natural carbon dioxide reservoirs such as the oceans. Relatively neglected in global planning efforts are the opportunities which may lie in the genetic engineering of the two key enzymes in photosynthetic carbon dioxide fixation, phosphoribulokinase (PRK) and ribulosebisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco). Even the smallest increase in the efficiency of CO 2 fixation by Rubisco would remove significant amounts of CO 2 from the atmosphere. (A 1% increase on a worldwide basis would theoretically fix 1.5.109 additional tons of CO 2 per year. It is estimated that 1.5.1011 tons of CO 2 are sequestered annually by photosynthesis.) Present funding in this area is modest by any standards and it is surprising that a concerted research program to achieve both an understanding and enhancement of the Rubisco reaction has not been implemented nor, perhaps, even seriously considered at a national level. With this in mind, the purpose of this review is to detail the background and research which led to the first isolation and characterization

Carbon dioxide enrichment of greenhouse atmospheres for food crop production

Early in the 17th century Jean-Baptiste van Helmont, a citizen of Brussels, conducted a classical experiment (99). A 5 pound willow tree was planted in a container with 200 pounds of oven-dried soil. Water was added as needed. After 5 years the tree had increased to 169 pounds, 3 ounces, but the soil itself still weighed 199 pounds and 14 ounces. The result of this experiment is usually cited to show the importance for plant growth of the small quantities of mineral nutrients derived from the soil. More forcibly it should remind us that the primary nutrient from which the bulk of the plant originates is the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Ordinary air contains approximately 0.03% carbon dioxide, or three parts in 10,000 by volume. Norman (70) has pointed out that to grow a crop of corn which will yield 100 bushels per acre requires 20,000 pounds of carbon dioxide. Thus, at the normal atmosphere level the plant must process 33,500 tons of air to procure 23/4 tons of carbon for the crop. It is a remarkable phenomenon of biological engineering that enables terrestrial plants to appropriate approximately 15 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year from the earth's atmosphere (70, 72). This feat labels photosynthesis as the world's most important biochemical process. The great demand of green plants for carbon dioxide, suggests that levels of this gas in the ambient air of a heavy crop stand, and particularly in enclosed greenhouse atmospheres, might become sufficiently depleted, that growth is reduced. Alternatively, carbon dioxide levels in plant growing atmospheres maintained substantially above the normal should favor growth. Results of experiments in the tank culture of algae,