GreenTechnology Flashcards
Dominant landscape of Canada
- Forest
How much of the world’s forests does Canada have?
- 9% of worlds forests
- 24% of world’s boreal forests
- Highest forest area per capita
How many trees are there in the world?
- Latest estimate: 3.04 trillion
What is the current turnover of trees each year?
- 15 billion cut, 5 billion replanted = 10 billion loss/year
How much carbon does the forest store? How much goes to other sources?
- Absorb and store approx. 25% of carbon emitted by burning fossil fuel
- Same amount as into the ocean, 50% to the atm
How does the forest store carbon?
- Much stored in forest soils
- Carbon is released when trees decompose (from burning, insect infestation)
- Idea: Store carbon by using more wood structures (lumber as storage)
Phytoremediation
- Use of plants to decontaminate polluted sites
- plants have extensive roots for absorbing substances
- Can transport material to shoots and store elemental pollutants (mercury, cadmium, arsenic, selenium, zinc)
- Some plants hyper-accumulators
- engineering of fast-growing plants (poplars, grasses)
Phytoremediation of chemical pollutants
- PCB, polychlorinated biphenyls
- TCE, trichloroethylene (dry cleaning)
- TNT, trinitrotoluene (dynamite)
- Microbial enzymes that degrade these can be engineered into plants
What are the fossils in fossil fuels?
- Dead organisms, mostly plants
- especially coal (oil more from marine sources)
What is the world’s most abundant fossil fuel? What period is most of this from in North American reserves?
- Coal
- Canada exports coal
- North American coal mostly from Carboniferous period 300-350mya, known for swamp forests
Plant gum in petroleum industry
- Polysaccharide salts of sugar units other than glucose (glucose polysaccharide make starch and cellulose)
- Presence of salts (calcium, magnesium, potassium) makes them interact with water to make gels
Human uses of plant gum
- Filler, emulsifier, texturizer
- Found in dairy, lotions, soaps (similar to carageenan)
- For stickiness in glues, dental adhesive, hair gel
Guar gum and petroleum industry
- Cyamopsis tetragonobulus, fabaceae, legume family, extracted from seeds
- Fracking: mixture of water, sand and chemicals injected into shale rock layers at high pressure to release natural gas
- Guar gum is best additive to suspend the components which allows the gas to flow out to the head of the well
Making plastic from plants (vs. from fossil fuels)
- plastics are also polymers of mostly carbon and hydrogen (Think about what is plastic)
- Plant-derived bioplastics: polymers can be produced from the fermentation of sugar and starch by bacteria and fungi
- Plastic polymers can also be made from cellulose and soy protein
PET
- Polyethylene terephthalate
- From Brazilian sugarcane
- 50 million tons produced annually from fossil fuel, also high CO2 output
- Starch to make polylactide PLA (corn, heavily fertilized) could substitute PET (tried in sun chip bags)
Plants such as Arabidopsis can be engineered to do what?
- Engineered with bacterial genes to make plastics (polyhydroxybutyrate)
Benefits and cons to plants as bioplastics
- Benefit: doesn’t use fossil fuels and chemical processes also take energy but can be less than for making synthetic plastics
- Con: other use of farm product that competes with food system
- Question: are bioplastics all biodegradable or compostable?
What is a way to compensate for the con of taking product out of the food system to make bioplastics?
- Use crop plant waste like corn and wheat silage
- Currently there is a proposal to use empty fruit bunch from palms harvested for oil
Landmine-detecting plant
- TNT dynamite leaches nitrous oxide NO2
- Put in plant visible marker genes (anthocyanin pigment) and NO2 sensitive control gene to singnal to make red leaves
- Plant seeds in suspect area and look for red leaf plants
- Strategy can also be used for other pollutants
Camelina oil, what family, where grown, how used
- Little known product from Camelina sativa, Brassicaceae mustard family
- Oil crop in Eastern Europe, can grow in semi-dry land
- Cooking oil produced in Saskatchewan, good omega 3,6,9, FA content
- Unexpected use is conversion to jet fuel that meets or exceeds all petroleum jet fuel specifcations
