How to measure carbon dioxide? and what plant absorbs the most carbon dioxide?

Question

Besides using a Fyrite device, is there any way to measure carbon dioxide levels?

If using a Fyrite device is the only way to do this, what's the basic idea behind how they work?

And...do you know which types of plants absorb the most carbon dioxide, or photosynthesizes the most efficiently?

Thanks!

Answer 1

One method is a gas train of flasks.  One flask contains an aqueous solution of sodium hydroxide of a known concentration.  Air is bubbled through the sodium hydroxide for a given amount of time.  The concentration of the sodium hydroxide is determined by tritration.  The data is inserted into a formula and the result is the amount of carbon dioxide present in the air.  I don't have the reference books available to be more specific.

Plants that are highly efficient photosynthesizers are the C-4 plants such as sugar cane and corn so they would likely be most efficient absorbing carbon dioxide.