carbon – Page 14 – Things Are Good

The Return of Rich Ocean Farming

Using the bounty of ocean to feed people is nothing new, but with a new spin on ocean farming we can have a sustainable food source (currently fishing is quite destructive) that also helps slow down the rate of climate change. We can use the very plants and animals that we are farming in the ocean to absorb carbon!

Seaweed is one of the fastest growing plants in the world; kelp, for example, grows up to 9-12 feet long in a mere three months. This turbo-charged growth cycle enables farmers to scale up their carbon sinks quickly. Of course, the seaweed grown to mitigate emissions would need to be harvested to produce carbon-neutral biofuels to ensure that the carbon is not simply recycled back into the air as it would be if the seaweed is eaten. The Philippines, China, and other Asian countries, which have long farmed seaweed as a staple food source, now view seaweed farms as an essential ingredient for reducing their carbon emissions.

Oysters also absorb carbon, but their real talent is filtering nitrogen out of the water column. Nitrogen is the greenhouse gas you don’t pay attention to — it is nearly 300 times as potent as carbon dioxide, and according to the journal Nature, the second worst in terms of having already exceeded a maximum “planetary boundary.” Like carbon, nitrogen is an essential part of life — plants, animals, and bacteria all need it to survive — but too much has a devastating effect on our land and ocean ecosystems.

Negative Carbon Concrete

The most popular construction material on the planet is concrete and it turns out that the way we use it is not environmentally friendly. What if we changed that?

A company has created a great concrete variation that actually beneficial for the environment as it removes excess carbon!

While it functions much like commonly used Portland cement, boasting the same level of performance and the same average cost, Novacemâ€™s concrete mixture uses magnesium silicate instead of calcium carbonates. The slinging of chemistry jargon might make this seem complicated, but the concept is simple: the creation of magnesium carbonates from magnesium silicates absorbs carbon dioxide. In other words, the production process is carbon negative. Furthermore, the production process of Novacemâ€™s concrete is low-energy, allowing it to be sustained on biomass fuels.

Carbon Cloth to Wipe Away Toxic Stuff

This is a pretty neat reuse of knowledge of material science from one of violence to one of saving the environment. Carbon cloth meant for the battlefield can be used to clean up toxic spills.

The textile is composed of tiny pores that adsorb organic molecules through weak Van der Waals forces. By adding ozone to the process, the fabric becomes even more effective at catalyzing the conversion of unwanted content into smaller moleculesâ€”or even carbon dioxide and water. In other words, the activated carbon cloth breaks pollutants down into less-harmful compounds.

Idea for Christians: Carbon Fast for Lent

If you’re a christian who observes lent then consider going green for 40 days.

Repentance, reflection and self-discipline are supposed to be observed during Lent, which symbolizes the 40 days Jesus spent in the desert and resisted Satan’s temptations, as described in the Bible.

A green Lent could mean “thinking about the environment and doing things to save it for yourself and those who come after us,” said White-Hassler, whose church possesses the mind-set year-round. Since the summer, Grace Episcopal has been undergoing eco-friendly renovations and is considering solar panels.

The practice of a carbon fast for Lent has been talked about in Christian circles since at least 2008, when the Church of England suggested shrinking one’s carbon footprint and provided a list of 40 green actions, one for each day of Lent. (“Day one, Ash Wednesday: Remove one lightbulb and live without it for the next 40 days.”)

The call was part of a global effort with Tearfund, a Christian relief agency, to help drought-ridden, impoverished communities that already suffer from the effects of climate change.

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Perhaps Your Pennies Can Clear the Air

Apparently copper can be used to scrub pollutants out of the air. Maybe one day a penny can help clean your house.

An easy way to get carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere is to find a chemical that combines easily with it, similar to the way that some metals oxidize. For example, compounds involving copper will usually combine with oxygen in the atmosphere voluntarily without catalysts, covering the surface of the copper material with a green patina, like the Statue of Liberty.

Unlike oxygen, carbon dioxide cannot combine so easily with other materials. It is possible to remove one electron from the molecule to facilitate its integration into other molecules, but that removal requires an electric potential of -1.97 volts, which is unreasonably high for the purpose of processing a single molecule.

One group of scientists found a certain dinuclear copper (I) complex that turns green when exposed to air under a slight electric potential (-0.03 volts). At first, they assumed it was from the exposure to oxygen, but upon closer inspection they learned that this particular form of copper was reacting with carbon dioxide.

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