Electron Microscopy of Hydrocarbon Production in Green Plants.

摘要

This year the land area of the United States will receive one thousand times as much energy from the sun as our society will use. Plants can be cultivated which convert the incident solar flux to chemical bond energy at efficiencies of approximately 1percent. Three hundred million acres of energy plantation would produce our current energy needs forever,or at least until the sun burns out. For comparison,the United States currently has about three hundred fifty million acres under cultivation. Besides energy,our society requires a great number of materials currently derived from declining oil supplies. These materials,lubricants,plastics,rubber,etc.,can also be biologically produced;for example, Malaysian rubber trees currently produce two thousand pounds of rubber per acre. The potential for growing hydrocarbon materials in the United States is great and largely untapped. This paper describes current and proposed research into hydrocarbon production in green plants. (ERA citation 02:020931)