Increasing environmental challenges have led scientists to rethink how protein can be produced. Traditional processes require a lot of space on land or sea, resulting in a high carbon footprint and reduced resources. A new ...
Other
17 hours ago
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10
How much carbon dioxide, a pivotal greenhouse gas behind global warming, is absorbed by plants on land? It's a deceptively complicated question, so a Rutgers-led group of scientists recommends combining two cutting-edge tools ...
Earth Sciences
Sep 21, 2020
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A research team from Caltech and the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering has demonstrated a promising way to efficiently convert carbon dioxide into ethylene—an important chemical used to produce plastics, solvents, cosmetics ...
Materials Science
Sep 17, 2020
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It's not often a new mass extinction is identified; after all, such events were so devastating they really stand out in the fossil record. In a new paper, published today in Science Advances, an international team has identified ...
Earth Sciences
Sep 16, 2020
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Carbon dioxide reduction reaction (CO2RR) uses renewable electricity to convert carbon dioxide and water into fuels and chemicals, which is considered as an effective way to simultaneously realize carbon recycling and renewable ...
Materials Science
Sep 15, 2020
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The ocean plays an invaluable role in capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, taking in somewhere between five to 12 gigatons (billion tons) annually. Due to limited research, scientists aren't sure exactly how ...
Environment
Sep 10, 2020
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128
New geologic findings about the makeup of the Earth's mantle are helping scientists better understand long-term climate stability and even how seismic waves move through the planet's layers.
Earth Sciences
Sep 10, 2020
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63
Streaming high-definition videos and games can result in significant greenhouse gas emissions, depending on the technology used, according to a German government-backed study released Thursday.
Environment
Sep 10, 2020
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Economists frequently try to estimate the societal cost of releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, but few of their projections go beyond the year 2100—far short of the millennia it takes for the climate changes from ...
Environment
Sep 10, 2020
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The drought that hit central and northern Europe in summer 2018 had serious effects on crops, forests and grasslands. Researchers from the European Research Infrastructure Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS), including ...
Earth Sciences
Sep 09, 2020
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Carbon dioxide (chemical formula: CO2) is a chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom. It is a gas at standard temperature and pressure and exists in Earth's atmosphere in this state.
Carbon dioxide is used by plants during photosynthesis to make sugars, which may either be consumed in respiration or used as the raw material to produce other organic compounds needed for plant growth and development. It is produced during respiration by plants, and by all animals, fungi and microorganisms that depend either directly or indirectly on plants for food. It is thus a major component of the carbon cycle. Carbon dioxide is generated as a by-product of the combustion of fossil fuels or the burning of vegetable matter, among other chemical processes. Large amounts of carbon dioxide are emitted from volcanoes and other geothermal processes such as hot springs and geysers and by the dissolution of carbonates in crustal rocks.
As of March 2009[update], carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere is at a concentration of 387 ppm by volume. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide fluctuate slightly with the change of the seasons, driven primarily by seasonal plant growth in the Northern Hemisphere. Concentrations of carbon dioxide fall during the northern spring and summer as plants consume the gas, and rise during the northern autumn and winter as plants go dormant, die and decay. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas as it transmits visible light but absorbs strongly in the infrared and near-infrared.
Carbon dioxide has no liquid state at pressures below 5.1 atmospheres. At 1 atmosphere (near mean sea level pressure), the gas deposits directly to a solid at temperatures below −78 °C and the solid sublimes directly to a gas above −78 °C. In its solid state, carbon dioxide is commonly called dry ice.
CO2 is an acidic oxide: an aqueous solution turns litmus from blue to pink. It is the anhydride of carbonic acid, an acid which is unstable and is known to exist only in aqueous solution.
CO2 is toxic in higher concentrations: 1% (10,000 ppm) will make some people feel drowsy. Concentrations of 7% to 10% cause dizziness, headache, visual and hearing dysfunction, and unconsciousness within a few minutes to an hour.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
