5 ms·

Better than nothing, but the level that plants "clean the air" is entirely negligible. Every time you open the door, enough air enters your house where you woul

Better than nothing, but the level that plants "clean the air" is entirely negligible. Every time you open the door, enough air enters your house where you would need to dedicate an entire room of plants for multiple days to clean that air. Just get a filter that can filter VOCs if you have that kind of concern. And then add plants as you wish to make you happy.

dinvlad 4y ago
I wonder how that compares just to some baggies with activated carbon.
- jrockway 4y ago
  Get a fan and a furnace filter and you have a top-of-the-line air purifier.
  - silisili 4y ago
    They are generally cheap enough now that it's probably not worth the effort. I think my last 2 cost 35 a piece, and came with extra filters and such. I used to think they were kinda useless until I had tile ripped up. The neverending dust was driving my wife insane. On a whim, bought a couple purifiers and it's cut the dust down by at least 90%.
    - thecoppinger 4y ago
      Any chance you could provide a link to an example product? Air purifiers seem pretty expensive, but I expect that might be due to my location
      - silisili 4y ago
        I bought these for 34.99 last month, but it appears to be gone now. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01N4IRIWK https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01N4IRIWK If you're looking for more features and a more known brand, Costco has these for 99, which is a pretty good deal considering their size and that they come with all extra filters. https://www.costco.com/winix-true-hepa-4-stage-air-purifier-with-wi-fi-and-additional-filter.product.100662892.html https://www.costco.com/winix-true-hepa-4-stage-air-purifier-...
        thecoppinger 4y ago
        Perfect, thank you very much.
        panarky 4y ago
        Rule of thumb: cut the quoted theoretical capacity in half. This one's theoretical capacity is 360 square feet, so you'd need eight of them in a 1500 square foot apartment.
        silisili 4y ago
        Never heard of it. Perhaps for its Hepa, 99.9% jargon sure. But we ran a single Bissel Air400 in a 2k sq ft area and it visibly reduced the dust you see on glass cabinets and such. We used to have to clean them about every 3 days. With that running, it was about every 2 to 3 weeks!
  - MengerSponge 4y ago
    https://cleanaircrew.org/box-fan-filters/ https://cleanaircrew.org/box-fan-filters/
  - googlryas 4y ago
    Not exactly. As I understand it furnace filters will just filter out particulate matter which is measured on the order of micron. It doesn't really do much for VOCs, which are measured on the order of picometers(0.2 microns = 200,000 picometers). You need another filter like activated charcoal which works differently than particulate filters (adsorption vs merely trapping particles in a winding path)
    - jrockway 4y ago
      The comment I'm replying to says "I wonder how a bag of charcoal would do". I assume you'd add that to my list of components.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      VOCs are nanometer scale. A rough estimate for atomic bond length in organic compounds is .15 nanometers. CO2, which should be smaller than basically any VOC, is half a nanometer across.
  - Sunspark 4y ago
    I used MERV 11 and still got tons of dust everywhere, and the ductwork is also musty smelling in the spring and fall.. prefer summer and winter because it's not as noticeable then.
zug_zug 4y ago
What do you mean? The air outside your house is almost certainly much lower in VOCs than inside.
- googlryas 4y ago
  Really depends where you live, but I suspect for most of the globe that is true(though not necessarily for most of the population). In that case, just open the windows! Or use a heat exchanger if the temp isn't reasonable outside. But, I was imagining a house sealed up with perfectly clean air and then "dirty" outside air getting in
  - hinkley 4y ago
    If you live somewhere that doesn’t, the better investment is in relocating, or public pressure to fix the problem.
- D13Fd 4y ago
  What do you mean? The outside air is also typically an unwanted temperature (although heat exchangers can mitigate that) and may contain allergens or particulates from smoke or exhaust.
dylan604 4y ago
Ever been in a place where you have a room totally barren of plants, and then able to walk into a room with plants? Which room do you feel better in? Whether it is the air cleaning or not, rooms with plants just feel so much better to me than the sterile feeling of no plants.
- Thiez 4y ago
  You don't need an engineered superplant for that feeling, though.
- googlryas 4y ago
  Sure, that's why I finished my post with "And then add plants as you wish to make you happy."
schainks 4y ago
It only takes three shoulder height plants (of a couple widely-available species) to recycle the CO2 produced by an adult human. Relevant talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/kamal_meattle_how_to_grow_fresh_air?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/kamal_meattle_how_to_grow_fresh_ai...
- googlryas 4y ago
  Sure but this is about VOCs, not CO2, though lowering CO2 levels indoors certainly isn't a bad thing, especially if you're in a small room without ventilation.
- gus_massa 4y ago
  The numbers don't check out. It looks like he is using a weird definition of recycle the CO2 produced by an adult human. A normal person need about 2000 kcalories per day. That's approximately 500g (1/2 kg) (1 pound) of sugar. Eating only sugar is bad, but most carbohydrates and proteins have a similar kcalories to weight ratio. If the plant absorbs all the CO2 produced by the person, it must rebuild all that sugar back (and store it as cellulose, or starch or even proteins, but again all have a very similar similar kcalories to weight ratio.) So the plant must grow approximately 500g (1/2 kg) (1 pound) per day. That is like 15kg (30 pounds) per month, that is a weigh of a small child. Or like 150kg (300 pounds) per year that is the weight of one or two adults. Plant's don't grow so much. (Note that you can reduce the weight to one half is the plant only makes oil instead of as cellulose, or starch or even proteins, but it still too high.) Edit: Self nitpicking: About the reduction of weigh using oil, I used calories per gram instead of carbon per gram. Oversimplifiying: In sugar the simplified unit is COH2, that has one carbon per 12+16+2=30 atomic units. In oil, the simplified unit is CH2 that has one carbon every 12+2=14 atomic units. So the ratio is aproximately 30/14=2.14 instead of the calories ratio that is 9/4=2.5. Both are very similar, so the end remark is still correct. I'm not sure if it's a coincidence or if I think hard enough about energy per atomic bound it get obvious. Proteins are harder, because amino acids are more diverse. I left the exact calculation for someone else, but as a rough simplification let's use achain of valine. The building block is C5ONH9 that is a carbon for every (12*5+16+14+9)/5=19.8 atomic units, so it's something in between. Anyway, don't expect your plant to make too much proteins. Even soy overdosed with fertilizer has only like a 15% of proteins.
Patrick-T 4y ago
Hey googlryas, Patrick from Neoplants here. Indeed, normal plants are too ineffective to remediate indoor air pollution. Which is why we are bioengineering them for this purpose! Unfortunately, according to government agencies like the EPA, there are no VOC purifying technologies that are effective and have no harmful by-products. If you want to deep dive, they published a technical report on these different technologies, their strenghts and drawbacks https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2018-07/documents/residential_air_cleaners_-_a_technical_summary_3rd_edition.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2018-07/documents/re... We made a quick summary of keys insights of this report in the intro of our white paper https://bit.ly/3hjMqsB https://bit.ly/3hjMqsB

dinvlad 4y ago

I wonder how that compares just to some baggies with activated carbon.

jrockway 4y ago
Get a fan and a furnace filter and you have a top-of-the-line air purifier.
- silisili 4y ago
  They are generally cheap enough now that it's probably not worth the effort. I think my last 2 cost 35 a piece, and came with extra filters and such. I used to think they were kinda useless until I had tile ripped up. The neverending dust was driving my wife insane. On a whim, bought a couple purifiers and it's cut the dust down by at least 90%.
  - thecoppinger 4y ago
    Any chance you could provide a link to an example product? Air purifiers seem pretty expensive, but I expect that might be due to my location
    - silisili 4y ago
      I bought these for 34.99 last month, but it appears to be gone now. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01N4IRIWK https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01N4IRIWK If you're looking for more features and a more known brand, Costco has these for 99, which is a pretty good deal considering their size and that they come with all extra filters. https://www.costco.com/winix-true-hepa-4-stage-air-purifier-with-wi-fi-and-additional-filter.product.100662892.html https://www.costco.com/winix-true-hepa-4-stage-air-purifier-...
      - thecoppinger 4y ago
        Perfect, thank you very much.
      - panarky 4y ago
        Rule of thumb: cut the quoted theoretical capacity in half. This one's theoretical capacity is 360 square feet, so you'd need eight of them in a 1500 square foot apartment.
        silisili 4y ago
        Never heard of it. Perhaps for its Hepa, 99.9% jargon sure. But we ran a single Bissel Air400 in a 2k sq ft area and it visibly reduced the dust you see on glass cabinets and such. We used to have to clean them about every 3 days. With that running, it was about every 2 to 3 weeks!
- MengerSponge 4y ago
  https://cleanaircrew.org/box-fan-filters/ https://cleanaircrew.org/box-fan-filters/
- googlryas 4y ago
  Not exactly. As I understand it furnace filters will just filter out particulate matter which is measured on the order of micron. It doesn't really do much for VOCs, which are measured on the order of picometers(0.2 microns = 200,000 picometers). You need another filter like activated charcoal which works differently than particulate filters (adsorption vs merely trapping particles in a winding path)
  - jrockway 4y ago
    The comment I'm replying to says "I wonder how a bag of charcoal would do". I assume you'd add that to my list of components.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    VOCs are nanometer scale. A rough estimate for atomic bond length in organic compounds is .15 nanometers. CO2, which should be smaller than basically any VOC, is half a nanometer across.
- Sunspark 4y ago
  I used MERV 11 and still got tons of dust everywhere, and the ductwork is also musty smelling in the spring and fall.. prefer summer and winter because it's not as noticeable then.

zug_zug 4y ago

What do you mean? The air outside your house is almost certainly much lower in VOCs than inside.

googlryas 4y ago
Really depends where you live, but I suspect for most of the globe that is true(though not necessarily for most of the population). In that case, just open the windows! Or use a heat exchanger if the temp isn't reasonable outside. But, I was imagining a house sealed up with perfectly clean air and then "dirty" outside air getting in
- hinkley 4y ago
  If you live somewhere that doesn’t, the better investment is in relocating, or public pressure to fix the problem.
D13Fd 4y ago
What do you mean? The outside air is also typically an unwanted temperature (although heat exchangers can mitigate that) and may contain allergens or particulates from smoke or exhaust.

dylan604 4y ago

Ever been in a place where you have a room totally barren of plants, and then able to walk into a room with plants? Which room do you feel better in? Whether it is the air cleaning or not, rooms with plants just feel so much better to me than the sterile feeling of no plants.

Thiez 4y ago
You don't need an engineered superplant for that feeling, though.
googlryas 4y ago
Sure, that's why I finished my post with "And then add plants as you wish to make you happy."

schainks 4y ago

It only takes three shoulder height plants (of a couple widely-available species) to recycle the CO2 produced by an adult human. Relevant talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/kamal_meattle_how_to_grow_fresh_air?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/kamal_meattle_how_to_grow_fresh_ai...

googlryas 4y ago
Sure but this is about VOCs, not CO2, though lowering CO2 levels indoors certainly isn't a bad thing, especially if you're in a small room without ventilation.
gus_massa 4y ago
The numbers don't check out. It looks like he is using a weird definition of recycle the CO2 produced by an adult human. A normal person need about 2000 kcalories per day. That's approximately 500g (1/2 kg) (1 pound) of sugar. Eating only sugar is bad, but most carbohydrates and proteins have a similar kcalories to weight ratio. If the plant absorbs all the CO2 produced by the person, it must rebuild all that sugar back (and store it as cellulose, or starch or even proteins, but again all have a very similar similar kcalories to weight ratio.) So the plant must grow approximately 500g (1/2 kg) (1 pound) per day. That is like 15kg (30 pounds) per month, that is a weigh of a small child. Or like 150kg (300 pounds) per year that is the weight of one or two adults. Plant's don't grow so much. (Note that you can reduce the weight to one half is the plant only makes oil instead of as cellulose, or starch or even proteins, but it still too high.) Edit: Self nitpicking: About the reduction of weigh using oil, I used calories per gram instead of carbon per gram. Oversimplifiying: In sugar the simplified unit is COH2, that has one carbon per 12+16+2=30 atomic units. In oil, the simplified unit is CH2 that has one carbon every 12+2=14 atomic units. So the ratio is aproximately 30/14=2.14 instead of the calories ratio that is 9/4=2.5. Both are very similar, so the end remark is still correct. I'm not sure if it's a coincidence or if I think hard enough about energy per atomic bound it get obvious. Proteins are harder, because amino acids are more diverse. I left the exact calculation for someone else, but as a rough simplification let's use achain of valine. The building block is C5ONH9 that is a carbon for every (12*5+16+14+9)/5=19.8 atomic units, so it's something in between. Anyway, don't expect your plant to make too much proteins. Even soy overdosed with fertilizer has only like a 15% of proteins.

Patrick-T 4y ago

Hey googlryas, Patrick from Neoplants here. Indeed, normal plants are too ineffective to remediate indoor air pollution. Which is why we are bioengineering them for this purpose! Unfortunately, according to government agencies like the EPA, there are no VOC purifying technologies that are effective and have no harmful by-products. If you want to deep dive, they published a technical report on these different technologies, their strenghts and drawbacks https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2018-07/documents/residential_air_cleaners_-_a_technical_summary_3rd_edition.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2018-07/documents/re... We made a quick summary of keys insights of this report in the intro of our white paper https://bit.ly/3hjMqsB https://bit.ly/3hjMqsB