One of the main resources we take for granted are trees. We symbiotically live with trees providing them with carbon dioxide, while they provide us with oxygen. Daily it can be seen that trees are being destroyed in order for us to build houses, malls, and coffee shops. Acting as a purifier for our air and main source of oxygen, as the amount of trees decrease our air quality overall decreases as well.
In order to help combat the decrease in oxygen having a bio-friendly home can help. With the addition of any kind of desert plant life to your home oxygen levels will increase and CO2 will decrease due to CAM photosynthesis.
" In a plant using full CAM, the stomata in the leaves remain shut during the day to reduce evapotranspiration, but open at night to collect carbon dioxide (CO2). The CO2 is stored as the four-carbon acid malate, and then used during photosynthesis during the day. The pre-collected CO2 is concentrated around the enzyme RuBisCO, increasing photosynthetic efficiency."
I have also read about some research projects concerning CO2 emissions. Dr. Jone's research group at Georgia Tech are working on a way to capture CO2 emissions from 'ambient air and other ultra-dilute gas streams' [Jones, 2012]. His research group showed that primary amines are better suited for CO2 capture from air than secondary or tertiary amines [Jones, 2012]. In addition, this type of 'air capture' reveals promise as a way to generate CO2 for other beneficial purposes. Although this approach is huge-scale, there's a possibility that some innovations will be created that could potentially be integrated into a household. I've included the link below if you're interested in reading about the research and various publications further.
ReplyDeletehttp://jones.chbe.gatech.edu/research/projects