Admire artificial plants, absorb carbon more than 1,000 times more effectively than real trees

Green forests are heavily damaged and regular emissions are released into the atmosphere. We need more measures to keep the human roof of the Earth home.

In the fight against climate change, we have the most powerful and longest ally of trees. Their daily work is to absorb carbon dioxide, reducing the amount of greenhouse gases harmful to the environment. But with the current deforestation situation and emissions still being released regularly and more and more, we are demanding that these trees work too much.

According to Christophe Jospe, chief planning officer at the Carbon State Research Center of Arizona , in the current situation, trees cannot absorb all the carbon dioxide that humans emit, unless all regions The land available on Earth we can turn into jungle.

Therefore, scientists are finding a new solution, a "savior" to save people: they desire to create plants with " super power ". It is an artificial tree , a new light that helps us in the fight to clean up the environment, because we cannot rely on people releasing a significant amount of carbon into a school. Therefore, one of the most appreciated and useful options is to collect those carbon emissions and find ways to turn them into something more useful, such as fuel.

Back in time five years ago, a group of researchers in Boston and a number of designers drew the idea of ​​creating " artificial plants " in the city. Their idea is that trees can filter carbon dioxide and can even get shade rather than just air filters placed throughout the city. These artificial plants will be placed in areas where soil is difficult to grow, so little sidewalks for plants to grow.

"Greening" bare land with artificial plants.

Although the Boston team has a good idea and created the first blueprints, finding the aid is not easy. " Nobody wants to be the first to spend money , " said Kimberly Poliquin, project manager of artificial plants. "Scientists might say that they do that, but investors always wonder if 'that' can be applied to reality."

The collection and storage of carbon gas is not an easy thing, they always require a high cost and therefore, the government and environmental organizations as well as other industrial organizations are still unable to implement This is on a large scale. It is not wrong to say that this technology is no longer as expensive as many years ago, but creating an " artificial forest " is still far away, because such an artificial tree costs approximately 350,000. USD, according to Mrs. Poliquin. Her current desire as well as that of the research team is to create a prototype within the next 1 to 2 years.

The way to capture carbon in the air is also not less. One of those ways is to get it directly from the chimneys of factories . Another way, the way Boston researchers have aimed, is to suck and filter carbon from the air. According to the theory, one square kilometer of artificial plants could remove 4 million tons of carbon a year . These figures are made by the Carbon Emission Research Center and they are also developing such a gas filtration technology.

Seven major projects on carbon filtration and storage at factories will be implemented in 2016 and 2017, most of which will be tested in the US and Canada. But it is necessary to speed up and expand the scope of application of waste capture in order to have a clear impact on the environment and climate. According to the Global Carbon Capture Institute, for such 15 large-scale global projects, the amount of carbon dioxide filtered out of the atmosphere will be 28 million tons annually. And to keep the atmosphere clean, we need to treat 4 billion tons of carbon by 2040 and have to reach 6 billion by 2050.

The Carbon Emission Research Center is developing a gas filtration technology that is 1,000 times more effective than a tree per biomass (biomass). Still need more time, because when this technology works in colder climates, it will often require additional costs.

Smoke emitted from an industrial factory.

Once the technology is completed, the team estimates that the cost of filtering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is $ 100 / ton. They focus on creating an efficient and cost-effective carbon dioxide filtration system, rather than trying to create an artificial tree that can filter both air and beauty and look good.

And so, this technology still needs to be further developed to be able to get a cost effective and universally available. Since 2007, the Global Carbon Capture Institute says that investing in global carbon capture is just under $ 20 billion, only one-tenth of the investment in renewable energy.

" Artificial tree technology needs a talented hand like Mike Bloomberg, Bill Gates or Mar Zuckerberg to take the first steps in this research problem, in order to lower the cost of capturing carbon dioxide. ", as Mr. Jospe shared. " Just give me $ 100 million, I will invest in researching and developing this technology vigorously and within 5 years, you will see interesting products starting to appear on the market" .

Billionaire Bill Gates is one of the investors in carbon gas research, aiming at an industrial technology that can turn captured carbon into fuel. A promising technology, but still only the first steps on the long way to replace the importance of trees in particular and plants in general.