Atmospheric Carbon-Harvesting Crops involve the genetic modification of plants to enhance their ability to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at significantly higher rates than naturally occurring plants. This is achieved through the engineering of enzymes and structural modifications in plant leaves.
These crops aim to address climate change by providing a method for large-scale carbon sequestration directly from the atmosphere, which can contribute to reducing greenhouse gas concentrations in the environment.
The process involves enhancing the enzyme RuBisCO, which is responsible for fixing CO2 during photosynthesis, by making it more efficient. Additionally, the leaf surface area is expanded using fractal geometry to increase the contact with atmospheric CO2. This combination allows plants to capture carbon dioxide at rates 100 times higher than natural levels.
The manufacturing process involves genetic engineering of plants. This includes the insertion and optimization of genes encoding for enhanced RuBisCO enzymes and the design of leaves with increased surface area through fractal geometry techniques.
The build process starts with selecting candidate plant species, followed by gene editing to introduce or modify existing genes. The modified plants are then grown in controlled environments to assess their performance before large-scale deployment.
Field units draw low hundreds of watts; fabrication is energy-intensive due to vacuum baking and other processing steps required for genetic modification.
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