Carbon primary productivity

Toxicity. The products of combustioa have beea studied for a number of plastic foams (257). As with other organics the primary products of combustion are most often carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide with smaller amounts of many other species depending on product composition and test conditions. 

The first commercial oil-fumace process was put into operation in 1943 by the Phillips Petroleum Co. in Borger, Texas. The oil-fumace blacks rapidly displaced all other types used for the reinforcement of mbber and today account for practically all carbon black production. In the oil-fumace process heavy aromatic residual oils are atomized into a primary combustion flame where the excess oxygen in the primary zone bums a portion of the residual oil to maintain flame temperatures, and the remaining oil is thermally decomposed into carbon and hydrogen. Yields in this process are in the range of 35 to 50% based on the total carbon input. A broad range of product quaHties can be produced. 

An interesting development in the use of metal carbonyl catalysts is the production of hydrocarbons from carbon monoxide and hydrogen. The reaction of carbon monoxide and hydrogen in a molten solution of sodium chloride and aluminum chloride with It4(CO) 2 a catalyst yields a mixture of hydrocarbons. Ethane is the primary product (184). 

Cesium Halides. Cesium bromide, [7787-69-1], CsBr, mol wt 212.82, theoretical cesium content 62.45%, is a colorless crystalline soUd, having a melting point of 636°C, a specific gravity of 4433 kg/m, and a solubUity of 1.23 kg/L of water at 25°C. It is usuaUy prepared by neutrali2ing the carbonate or hydroxide with HBr, but it is also the primary product of the Dow process (25) for poUucite processing. 

To dehydrolaudanosoline chloride Robinson and Sugasawa, and independently Schopf and Thierfelder ascribe formula (VI), which makes it 2 3 11 12-tetrahydroxy-8-methyldibenzotetrahydropyrrocolinium chloride. The primary tetracetyl-derivative, m.p. 148°, is represented by (VII R = acetyl) and the second acetyl derivative, m.p. 215°, by (VII R = acetyl) with an ethylenic linkage between carbon atoms 15 and 16. Similarly, the initial tetramethoxy-derivative is to be represented by (VI) with the four hydroxyl groups replaced by methoxyl groups the primary product formed on heating, by loss of methyl chloride, will be represented by (VII R = OMe), and the second product, m.p. 201-3°, of the reaction will be represented by (VII R = OMe), with an ethylenic linkage between and C e-... 

Complete dissociation of the primary product (160) would result in the loss of the formyl fragment and in the stabilization of the remaining oxydiene radical by hydrogen abstraction from any suitable donor. As a competitive primary photoprocess bridging between the C-5 jS-carbon and the... 

As seen already, palmitate is the primary product of the fatty acid synthase. Cells synthesize many other fatty acids. Shorter chains are easily made if the chain is released before reaching 16 carbons in length. Longer chains are made through special elongation reactions, which occur both in the mitochondria and at the surface of the endoplasmic reticulum. The ER reactions are actually quite similar to those we have just discussed addition of two-carbon units... 

Two of the study systems, Lake Michigan and Pond 3513, exhibit cyclic behavior in their concentrations of Pu(V) (Figure 2 and 3). The cycle in Lake Michigan seems to be closely coupled with the formation in the summer and dissolution in the winter of calcium carbonate and silica particles, which are related to primary production cycles in the lake(25). The experimental knowledge that both Pu(IV) and Pu(V) adsorb on calcium carbonate precipitates(20) confirms the importance of carbonate formation in the reduction of plutonium concentrations in late summer. Whether oxidation-reduction is important in this process has not been determined. 

The quantity of primary production that is exported from the upper ocean is said to be equivalent to new production (18, 19) New primary production is that associated with allocthonous nutrients (i.e., those upwelled or mixed into the euphotic zone or input via rivers and rain). In order for steady state to be maintained, an equivalent flux out of the euphotic zone is required. Earlier studies (19) suggested that sediment-trap measurements of particulate organic carbon (POC) flux were equivalent to new primary production however, recently it has become clear that these measurements probably represent only a... 

Predicting the effect of the terrestrial vegetation response to C02-induced climate change for a particular site involves explicit treatment of feedbacks. These are diagramed in Figure 3. The balance between decomposition + autotrophic respiration and gross primary production (GPP) determines the net storage and release of carbon to atmosphere. Climate meets each of these... 

The annual primary production of organic carbon through photosynthesis is on the order of 70 Pg/yr. The major part of this carbon is decomposed or respired in a process that also involves the biogeochemical transformation of nitrogen, sulfur, and many other elements. Only a small part of the annual primary production of organic carbon escapes decomposition and is buried in marine sediments. On average. 

Sediment trap studies in the open ocean show that the flux of organic carbon at any depth is directly proportional to the rate of primary productivity in the surface water and inversely proportional to the depth of the water column (Suess, 1980) ... 

Fig. 10-15 Organic carbon fluxes with depth in the water column normalized to mean annual primary production rates at the sites of sediment trap deployment. The undulating line indicates the base of the euphotic zone the horizontal error bars reflect variations in mean annual productivity as well as replicate flux measurements during the same season or over several seasons vertical error bars are depth ranges of several sediment trap deployments and uncertainities in the exact depth location. (Reproduced with permission from E. Suess (1980). Particulate organic carbon flux in the oceans - surface productivity and oxygen utilization, Nature 288 260-263, Macmillan Magazines.)...

Oceanic surface waters are efficiently stripped of nutrients by phytoplankton. If phytoplankton biomass was not reconverted into simple dissolved nutrients, the entire marine water column would be depleted in nutrients and growth would stop. But as we saw from the carbon balance presented earlier, more than 90% of the primary productivity is released back to the water column as a reverse RKR equation. This reverse reaction is called remineralization and is due to respiration. An important point is that while production via photosynthesis can only occur in surface waters, the remineralization by heterotrophic organisms can occur over the entire water column and in the underlying sediments. 

Primary production maintains the main carbon flux from the atmosphere to the biota. In the process of photosynthesis, CO2 from the atmosphere is reduced by autotrophic organisms to a wide range of organic substances. The complex biochemistry involved can be represented by the formula... 

Terrestrial biomass is divided into a number of subreservoirs with different turnover times. Forests contain approximately 90% of all carbon in living matter on land but their NPP is only 60% of the total. About half of the primary production in forests yields twigs, leaves, shrubs, and herbs that only make up 10% of the biomass. Carbon in wood has a turnover time of the order of 50 years, whereas turnover times of carbon in leaves, flowers, fruits, and rootlets are less than a few years. When plant material becomes detached from the living, plant carbon is moved from the phytomass reservoir to litter. "Litter" can either refer to a layer of dead plant material on the soil or all plant materials not attached to a living plant. A litter layer can be a... 

Many estimates of total terrestrial net primary production are available, ranging between 45.5 Pg C/yr (Lieth, 1972) and 78 Pg/yr (Bazilevich et al., 1970). Ajtay ef oZ. (1979) have revised the various estimates and methods involved, they also reassess the classifications of ecosystem types and the extent of the ecosystem surface area using new data and arriving at a total NPP of 60 Pg C/yr. Gross primary production is estimated to be twice net primary production, i.e., 120 Pg C/yr. This implies that about 60 Pg C/yr are returned to the atmosphere during the respiratory phase of photosynthesis. It is well known that carbon dioxide uptake by plants follows daily cycles most plants take up CO2... 

The subsequent fate of the assimilated carbon depends on which biomass constituent the atom enters. Leaves, twigs, and the like enter litterfall, and decompose and recycle the carbon to the atmosphere within a few years, whereas carbon in stemwood has a turnover time counted in decades. In a steady-state ecosystem the net primary production is balanced by the total heterotrophic respiration plus other outputs. Non-respiratory outputs to be considered are fires and transport of organic material to the oceans. Fires mobilize about 5 Pg C/yr (Baes et ai, 1976 Crutzen and Andreae, 1990), most of which is converted to CO2. Since bacterial het-erotrophs are unable to oxidize elemental carbon, the production rate of pyroligneous graphite, a product of incomplete combustion (like forest fires), is an interesting quantity to assess. The inability of the biota to degrade elemental carbon puts carbon into a reservoir that is effectively isolated from the atmosphere and oceans. Seiler and Crutzen (1980) estimate the production rate of graphite to be 1 Pg C/yr. 

The two prime mechanisms of carbon transport within the ocean are downward biogenic detrital rain from the photic zone to the deeper oceans and advection by ocean currents of dissolved carbon species. The detrital rain creates inhomogeneities of nutrients illustrated by the characteristic alkalinity profiles (Fig. 11-9). The amount of carbon leaving the photic zone as sinking particles should not be interpreted as the net primary production of the surface oceans since most of the organic carbon is recycled... 

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