3 / 2 0 0 6 M A X P L A N C K R E S E A R C H 2120 M A X P L A N C K R E S E A R C H 3 / 2 0 0 6
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In Antonietti’s scenario, everything that pollutes the countryside
today, everything that farmers plow
under to get rid of and everything
that gardening...
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3 / 2 0 0 6 M A X P L A N C K R E S E A R C H 2120 M A X P L A N C K R E S E A R C H 3 / 2 0 0 6
FOCUS
In Antonietti’s scenario, everything that pollutes the countryside
today, everything that farmers plow
under to get rid of and everything
that gardening enthusiasts toss onto
the compost heap or into the biowaste container becomes valuable
raw material.
By way of coal, it can
be used to obtain gasoline, diesel fuel or key chemicals, or it can be
transformed into topsoil and even
used in fuel cells to obtain energy
directly.
No additional carbon dioxide is created in the process – in
fact, large quantities are actually
pulled out of the atmosphere and
bound.
Is this utopian? A sophistry of an
academic crackpot? No.
Chemist
Markus Antonietti takes a very fundamental approach to the subject.
For example, he first looked at the
energy landscape of various carbon
compounds: “Ultimately, biomass
consists of sugar building blocks that
contain a lot of energy.
Using a
chemical process t
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