3 ms·

> (it turns out my office really needs a fan as the single plant on the opposite side of the room is failing to keep up even with my sedentary exhaling) A huma

by sampo 4y ago

> (it turns out my office really needs a fan as the single plant on the opposite side of the room is failing to keep up even with my sedentary exhaling) A human exhales about 1 kg of CO2 in a day (24 hours). That is about 270 grams of C. You'd need enough plants to sequester 270 grams of carbon, or about 0.5 kg of biomass (dry weight) per day, to "keep up" with your exhaling. This is much more than one houseplant.

kragen 4y ago
my notes from 02019 https://dercuano.github.io/notes/gardening-machines.html https://dercuano.github.io/notes/gardening-machines.html say that my rosemary bush had a doubling time of about 66 days rosemary is about 50% water [citation needed] and most of the dry part is carbohydrate, (ch₂o)ₙ, which should weigh [edited] 68% as much than the co₂, so roughly each kg of co₂ becomes 1.4 kg of rosemary a doubling time of 66 days is about 1.05% growth per day, so you need about 130 kg of rosemary bush in your office to grow 1.4 kg per day and thus keep up with your exhaling except actually it only needs to grow 1.4 kg per day during the daytime, not at night when it isn't photosynthesizing, so maybe you could get by with 90 kg of rosemary bush or so and probably about half a tonne of soil, say about 2 m² could be a single plant but it's kind of a tree-sized plant if you need it to suck up your co₂ at night you need a crassulacean acid metabolism (cam) plant like aloe, but i think you need a larger amount of it because cam plants tend to grow slower. maybe moringa but i don't know if it's obligate cam or facultative cam [edited to correct calculation erorr]
- OJFord 4y ago
  > maybe you could get by with 90 kg of rosemary bush or so Which would be massive, and look absurd indoors. Though maybe that's not a problem, since you shouldn't have anyone over who might laugh at and embarrass you over it - it'd then be only half as big as it needs to be!
  - kragen 4y ago
    i think it would look freaking awesome and smell amazing. i would love it if this were the new standard for offices might harbor moths tho
    - OJFord 4y ago
      I agree it would smell amazing. But offices! 90kg+ of living rosemary per person! When I worked in an office we didn't have anything like the space for that, even if you got rid of the desks and chairs and people. That would be quite something.
      - kragen 4y ago
        you'd need several square meters per person of skylights or other windows to feed the rosemary
        OJFord 4y ago
        But higher humidity than you'd otherwise want... Maybe you could get away with something comfortable if they were kept well-watered, a continual automatic drip say.
        kragen 4y ago
        rosemary can handle pretty low rainfall, you can probably keep the surface of the soil pretty dry if you water it very intermittently things like aloe and spekboom even less rainfall then you could work nights but this is starting to sound less like an office and more like the stuff i was writing about 9 years ago in https://dercuano.github.io/notes/underground-arcology.html https://dercuano.github.io/notes/underground-arcology.html
- morog 4y ago
  Spekboom - Portulacaria afra is what u want. Very dense plant with lots of surface area and supposedly among the best CAM photosynthesis plants. Grows indoors, requires minimal care. Image search for 'huge spekboom' they are truly impressive
  - kragen 4y ago
    looks nice too but it's not obligate cam, apparently you have to starve it of water to force it into cam (which means it won't grow) edible tho, like moringa
- jobigoud 4y ago
  Kurtis Baute tried to seal himself in a greenhouse with plants and that wasn't enough to compensate the exhaling. It was featured in a Tom Scott video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Nh_vxpycEA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Nh_vxpycEA
  - kragen 4y ago
    there are lots of ways to fuck it up concrete carbonatation was eating the oxygen in biosphere 2

by sampo 4y ago

kragen 4y ago

my notes from 02019 https://dercuano.github.io/notes/gardening-machines.html https://dercuano.github.io/notes/gardening-machines.html say that my rosemary bush had a doubling time of about 66 days rosemary is about 50% water [citation needed] and most of the dry part is carbohydrate, (ch₂o)ₙ, which should weigh [edited] 68% as much than the co₂, so roughly each kg of co₂ becomes 1.4 kg of rosemary a doubling time of 66 days is about 1.05% growth per day, so you need about 130 kg of rosemary bush in your office to grow 1.4 kg per day and thus keep up with your exhaling except actually it only needs to grow 1.4 kg per day during the daytime, not at night when it isn't photosynthesizing, so maybe you could get by with 90 kg of rosemary bush or so and probably about half a tonne of soil, say about 2 m² could be a single plant but it's kind of a tree-sized plant if you need it to suck up your co₂ at night you need a crassulacean acid metabolism (cam) plant like aloe, but i think you need a larger amount of it because cam plants tend to grow slower. maybe moringa but i don't know if it's obligate cam or facultative cam [edited to correct calculation erorr]

OJFord 4y ago
> maybe you could get by with 90 kg of rosemary bush or so Which would be massive, and look absurd indoors. Though maybe that's not a problem, since you shouldn't have anyone over who might laugh at and embarrass you over it - it'd then be only half as big as it needs to be!
- kragen 4y ago
  i think it would look freaking awesome and smell amazing. i would love it if this were the new standard for offices might harbor moths tho
  - OJFord 4y ago
    I agree it would smell amazing. But offices! 90kg+ of living rosemary per person! When I worked in an office we didn't have anything like the space for that, even if you got rid of the desks and chairs and people. That would be quite something.
    - kragen 4y ago
      you'd need several square meters per person of skylights or other windows to feed the rosemary
      - OJFord 4y ago
        But higher humidity than you'd otherwise want... Maybe you could get away with something comfortable if they were kept well-watered, a continual automatic drip say.
        kragen 4y ago
        rosemary can handle pretty low rainfall, you can probably keep the surface of the soil pretty dry if you water it very intermittently things like aloe and spekboom even less rainfall then you could work nights but this is starting to sound less like an office and more like the stuff i was writing about 9 years ago in https://dercuano.github.io/notes/underground-arcology.html https://dercuano.github.io/notes/underground-arcology.html
morog 4y ago
Spekboom - Portulacaria afra is what u want. Very dense plant with lots of surface area and supposedly among the best CAM photosynthesis plants. Grows indoors, requires minimal care. Image search for 'huge spekboom' they are truly impressive
- kragen 4y ago
  looks nice too but it's not obligate cam, apparently you have to starve it of water to force it into cam (which means it won't grow) edible tho, like moringa
jobigoud 4y ago
Kurtis Baute tried to seal himself in a greenhouse with plants and that wasn't enough to compensate the exhaling. It was featured in a Tom Scott video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Nh_vxpycEA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Nh_vxpycEA
- kragen 4y ago
  there are lots of ways to fuck it up concrete carbonatation was eating the oxygen in biosphere 2