what secrets why behind those walls. discover new adventures in 360 degree. and explore fascinating world heritage sites. world heritage 360 get here now. greenhouse gas is trash and heavy metals we humans are really hard on the earth. but many industries have been briefing to how they work and science is lending that right hand. today we take a look at a few funded projects that are hoping to reduce c o 2 emissions for eliminate them entirely. welcome to this edition of tomorrow today the science show on t.w.

. records we accompany a german research it the united arab emirates. the average country in the arabian gulf was long known for its high energy consumption. but now it's not as attractions and glitzy megaprojects may be a thing of the past the country's oil wealth is drawing up and the climate crisis is growing ever more. could come to the rescue. greenhouses near abu dhabi in the united arab emirates the plants here can only survive in this arid environment because they're watered by an expensive irrigation system and protected from the sun. climate. change is already having

a major impact here. could genetically modified plants that are better adapted to the heat be part of the solution and even help slow down climate change. in his experiments trauma stand a car from vert sport university has found a way to get tobacco plants to absorb more c o 2 which could help pull the greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere. he's collaborating with mohamed nasim a biologist who works in votes borg and abu dhabi so exciting to me to see they have weekly meetings from one greenhouse to the next thousands of kilometers apart. they're hoping to modify plants to bind more c o 2 and boost their yields that would be especially helpful in desert countries like the united arab emirates. which.

you've used to snow the. desert as a real threat and sister a few kilometers away from the university the government wants all professors to make a contribution to fight against global warming. and i'm lies. it's abundantly clear that the amount of fertile land is shrinking as a god it is seeing carbon fixation is very important he so that we can feed just as many people with less land and. the scientists are hoping to supercharge plants to make them better at absorbing c o 2 during photosynthesis leaves consume carbon dioxide and release oxygen using the enzyme or biscoe but it's not a fast or efficient process so up to 50 percent of their conversion efficiency is lost. to a standard. and just colleague eleanor and sort of are modulating the plant's

metabolism to make it easier for their leaves to buy c o 2. they're working with bacteria and synthetic enzymes which are introduced into the plant cells the goal is to slow down for the response process in which c o 2 is released instead of stored a synthetic metabolic cycle will also give the process a boost. in. building 2 things into the plants the synthetic cycle enables them to fix too much better and it's quicker and the largest quantity is stored. the other has to do with photo respiration c o 2 is lost in this process and i can block this undesirable cycle by changing the mix of enzymes so that c o 2 is either not released or is immediately recycled. so far these climate

friendly plants only exist in the laboratory but the car and his doctoral student. have developed a computer model that shows what their super charged plants might one day be able to do. by passing photo respiration and modulating the metabolic network will keep carbon dioxide inside the plants instead of releasing it into the atmosphere plant's modified this way could bind 5 times as much c o 2. as a time in mathematical terms the model works that's a really important result that has come up with in her calculations. and that means that i can perfectly argument the blocking of c o 2 transport with the synthetic cycles. and. these computer simulations are being put to the test in abu dhabi. the university

greenhouse is growing tomatoes and. will their supercharged plants have a higher yield and more c o 2. genetically modified plants are permitted in the united arab emirates under highly controlled conditions one day supercharged plants might be grown in secure greenhouses and the technology might also be used in other applications. trees for example could be enhanced to store more c o 2. algae that grows in the flooded sand pits near cement factories could be modified to bind more smokestack emissions. and golden rice which already boosts vitamin e. might also become more climate friendly. this is an important moment in time where the c o 2 imbalance is still unstable years where new conditions have not yet been

established as the ice free polar caps like the thawing of permafrost is that is why we need to research fully reversible and mild climate mitigation strategies so that we know which way to go when things get critical in say 10 years' time. the scientists hope that green genetic engineering could help boost prompt heels and at the same time we do c o 2 emissions. if their research pays off supercharged crops could help solve 2 of our biggest problems. global hunger and global warming. pulling greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere is one solution. but eliminating emissions would be even better. the steel industry is one of the dirtiest

industries in the world the blast furnace is that heated with coal are a big part of the problem. might find it in here green a solution the germans still produce it is betting that it could. take. to some corpus germany's biggest steel producer and also its biggest c o 2 producer its factories pump out around $20000000.00 tons of carbon dioxide a year amounting to almost 3 percent of total c o 2 emissions in germany and the furnace is there used to play a big role in that. the theory is this is a blast furnace one with a conventional design that normally uses iron ore and coke as an additive in full view. of the 100 meter tall furnace is filled much like a pepper grinder

a fan blows in hot air and coal dust at the bottom ion occurs naturally in oxidized form so the oxygen has to be extracted to obtain the pure metal that's where the coke or carbon comes in. the byproduct is carbon dioxide. as the gas rises the crude or pig iron melts and flows to the bottom. to do sport based company wants to reduce those c o 2 emissions and eventually eliminate them. they're carrying out tests to see of hydrogen could be used in the furnace instead of carbon. that currently completing the initial phase 1st we have to figure out a good way to get the hydrogen deep into the furnace off if. it's a tricky process because hydrogen is a highly reactive element when it's come by. and with oxygen it forms

a highly combustible gas oxy hydrogen every 2 hours the steel workers tap off the fresh. samples are sent to the laboratory on site where the quality of the iron and other raw materials is checked for. the hydrogen technique is also a new territory for the engineers here. and of course have us for being part of this transformation is a huge challenge it's not as easy as people might think that if we're now injecting hydrogen into the furnace that means our tests also have to be changed to dust off the composition of the gases difference and we might have to change other parameters to. see. in the labs trial fantasy's the engineers carry out test runs with a variety of additives and gases. they need a huge amount of hydrogen which is also a major challenge. these blue cylinders

supply just one of the furnace is 28 injection nozzles are limits while at the moment we have 2 trucks delivering the hydrogen to us in rotation multiply that by 28 and you can see we have a crazy number of deliveries here it's not feasible over the long term which is why we're laying a pipeline. 130 kilometers south of duisburg is a company that knows all about pipelines and that's also investing in hydrogen production the shell rhineland refinery is the largest refinery in germany. shell is now building the world's largest electrolysis plant here on site the facility will use electricity from renewable sources to produce green hydrogen. the coronavirus pandemic has slowed down construction work somewhat. but a walk. the pipes are already in place. see it.

might just be water but it has to travel $700.00 metres we had to use some pipe rack with stainless steel it has to be heated to prevent freezing it's not just an ordinary part. of our. life. now it's on to the next stage the refinery director is coming to the site to see how things are going. he's already making plans for the future. he was waked up with a payphone fame mayor of what it is project has a capacity of 10 mega watch it's a start and we can learn from it we want to get the technology up and running to see if it scalable to 100 megawatts or more what we learn will help us move the technology forward and that's what makes it so fascinating little falls on the spot floor thought is awful so you. shall hopes that one day it might be able to export

its green hydrogen. the steelworks in 3 spoke also a promising customer they also have big plans in store. by 2050 at the latest to some quick ones to use no coke at all in its furnace is. for that they'll need an all new blast furnace one that will be fed with iron ore pellets and hot hydrogen. instead of dirty c o 2 the byproduct would be h 2 o. water in the form of steam. and they want the furnace to be powered with thermal energy source from green electricity. they've already seen some promising results. of. this is what you've already managed is to shift the conversion of the hydrogen deep inside the furnace interior then. hydrogen doesn't just combust but extracts the oxygen

from the iron ore leaving us with workable pig iron in the end the solution was. pig iron produced with this method is higher in quality too when coke is used the pig iron contains unwanted by products like sulphur and phosphorus which have to be removed but that's not the case with hydrogen it's a truly clean fuel. germany did it in 2020. back to tested it almost 20 years ago. but the ban on plastic bags hasn't made much of the difference that yes. altena tips made from natural jute haven't caught on. now a scientist in bangladesh may have found a solution for that. this

is a market at the edge of the bangladeshi capital dhaka. the fish section is very busy as all those. many species are on sale at the stalls. and everywhere single use plastic bags everybody uses the. u.s. django has been selling fish here for 10 years. he knows that plastic bags are bad for the environment but he says his customers should take responsibility. but on the back of either of. these bags are everywhere and that's why we use them . if we could get different ones we would use them people who shop at the market

should bring their own bags of baskets but nobody does them i said. right beside the market is a lake it's very polluted and plastic trash is everywhere. disposable plastic bags have been banned in bangladesh since 2002 but the authorities don't enforce the ban. one reason is the lack of alternatives that are slight and cheap and easy to use as regular bags made of polyethylene. eco friendly bags are available for sale but they are rarely used bangladesh is the 3rd biggest producer of jute in the world. the abundance

of this resource inspired scientist mubarak ahmed khan to develop a biodegradable polymer derived from jude fibers and then bags made out of it. when i lived. in bangladesh called the golden 5 i think that's why the prime minister gave up product the name gone back. to its recyclable if you dissolve in water you can dry it and make something new and with it. the tsunami back went through a long period of development and testing before to change its present form. if the back is burnt it doesn't release dangerous chemicals the way polyethylene does. waist you are the

source materials for the batch they look as if they're made of regular plastic but they're not. that i'm not the least put it 1st if we preach fraud to you to tell it's white you know should i pick on that cinemas if they're put in then we extract cellulose from it but it may soon we will recess the cellulose to make it will to soluble book am i going to get to the will but i don't know money due. to me when we out of finding agent it's at them not binding on it and that yields the solution if you don't mr good at the solution. a solution to that solution we produce the bags we use arius methods to make them. politically. conscious the manufacturing process is entirely natural unlike that for bags made from other plants such as manya or the peel of

sugarcane. our bags are completely biodegradable compostable and water soluble water but are also dependable and dependable we can produce bags that last as long as customers need them to. protect. the pollution of the sea the land and the air is a big topic right now i don't want to lend. our bags are a good environmentally friendly alternative to put our money finally back. the government back to pilot project to manufacture them proved a success. the challenge now is to develop large capacity machines and scale of production so that so nobly bags can be made available across the country. and now it's time for your questions this time we've got one from south america.

the louisiana hello my name is. and i'm from columbia and i have a question for tomorrow today why is plankton important for our planet back now. dealer maya good question let's take a look at sea water one teaspoonful contains up to a 1000000 organisms viruses fundi bacteria tiny algae and other creatures. all organisms carried along by the current account as plight even large ones like jellyfish but most are so small you need a microscope to see them. it's quite beautiful and when they multiply a lot you can even see that from space. plankton are extremely important for the global ecosystem here are 3 reasons why number one breathing without plankton we couldn't breathe fighter plankton that is plant like plankton

a photosynthetic their fuel by light energy from the sun and give off oxygen in the process the way trees do too but all in all phytoplankton release a lot more oxygen than trees do photosynthesis also involves the consumption of carbon dioxide so phytoplankton help combat climate change by pulling c o 2 from the environment number 2 eating plankton a key to the global food chain phytoplankton a region by 0 plankton that is tiny animals eat tiny plants fish and other larger aquatic creatures eat plants and even some of the biggest animals eat it like some species of whale. sounds a lot of what we was reared on plankton without them the entire food chain would collapse. which brings us to number 3. plankton are also the source

of rule materials what do these buildings have in common like stared. gets formed from the shells of dead microorganisms that gather on the sea floor. over a 1000000 years or so debra's cemented together into rock one cubic centimeter of chalk a kind of limestone is made up of hundreds of millions of tiny shells. just think how many there must be here. trying to maybe very small but sometimes it's the little things that play a very big role. by the way the amount of plankton changes seasonally and in response to other factors . but in some regions there's been a massive decline in. the us and expand it what can we do to protect

plankton. to inform the atmosphere will show the biggest factor is reducing atmospheric carbon emissions. the same as that is related to fish or ice the larger creatures plankton and fish are important for the mineral nutrients cycle. through for the outside says if you take those creatures out of the system by overfishing for example then you also change the mineral nutrient cycles. then ended. that also has a direct impact on phytoplankton because they need mineral nutrients to grow to vaccinate people on their own. town as planting research changed over time. through our hearts more investment in form land we used to base our approach to the oceans and what we knew about was. and ecosystems. not at 1st scientists focus

primarily on how mineral nutrients are distributed in the ocean and how phytoplankton respond to these nutrients. that's. gets in but we are now discovering that the many interactions among the plankton might be more important. then that's the direction research is now going in. looking at the interactions which species are her together how they are distributed and that kind of thing. you've got to wonder why didn't. the data shows that these interactions are very important one of the most important involves predation. grazing pressure from plankton. if we look at these types of interactions in detail then of course rediscover completely new facets of plankton ecology.

and. for plan a typical example diatoms. and this model with the fifty's car surges have examined the robustness of their salissa fide cell walls and which animals eat such creatures and how the structure of these shells offers protection from various predators. the problem is right right right. do you have a science question you'd like us to answer. send again as a video text man if we featured on the show you'll get a little surprise from us as a thank you come on just ask. for more science stories check out our website. d.w.

dot com slash signs or look for us on twitter. that's all for now thanks for joining us on tamara today. will be back next week with another edition i'm told by.

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slavery i think will truly be making progress when we all accept the history of slavery as all of our history. our documentary series slavery routs starts march 10th on t w. this is d w news and these are our top stories donald trump has returned to the political stage as a conservative conference in florida was given a rapturous reception by supporters hoping he could run for u.s. president again in 2024 he was banned from social media in the last days of his presidency and has since kept a low profile. the united nations says 18 people have been killed and 30 wounded in may and.