Monday, January 22, 2007

Trees & CO2

More Wonderful Facts About Trees And CO2


A fellow eco blogger on the Treeflights website has found this piece on carbon fixation by our friends, the trees. It would appear that when you take the oxygen into account the tree is actually fixing an amount of CO2 that is more than its own weight!
It comes from the National Science Foundation so perhaps we can believe it?

'..We find that about 45% of the dry mass (not including the water) of a tree comes from carbon. In other words,
a 100 Kilogramm log of a tree that has been completely dried contains about 45 kilograms of stored carbon.

While each kilogram of dried tree is storing .45 kilograms of carbon, it is removing more than a kilogram of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This is because each carbon dioxide molecule contains two oxygen atoms.... this means that each CO2 molecule has an atomic mass of 12+2(16)=44, of which only 12 are due to the carbon. Therfore, for each atom of carbon stored in the tree, 44 atomic mass units of CO2 is removed from the atmosphere. Therefore this equates to each kilogram of dried tree corresponding to:

(1kg of dried tree) x (.45 kg of C/1 kg) x 44 amu of CO2/12 AMU of C) = 1.65 kg of CO2.'

(AMU= Atomic Mass Units)

From- ESA 21, National Science foundation.

Make Good Choices - plant a tree or sponsor a tree via Treeflights today please

From Your Friend The Energy Angel

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