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Algae on greenhouse walls
Rob Halgren wrote in message ...
J. Del Col wrote: "Wendy" wrote in message news:sB23b.69617$kP.25605@fed1read03... Just another thought on algae..........It is alive & growing, so it's using up the oxygen that the plants need? Yes? Cheers Wendy No. Plants use CO2 and give off oxygen as a waste product. Most of the oxygen presently on earth is the product of plant metabolism. (mostly by marine plankton) Before oxygenating organisms evolved, Earth's atmosphere was probably devoid of free oxygen. Well... A bit of an oversimplification, but close enough for government work. Plants need oxygen too. Depending on the type of metabolism (Oh yes, there are several types... nothing is simple), a plant may fix carbon during the day (bringing in CO2 and turning it into sugars and whatnot) and utilize that fixed carbon (respiration, requiring oxygen just like animals do) at night. So, plants can literally suck the oxygen _out_ of the air at night... All that said, CO2 is always more limiting than O2. In fact, many growers of numerous indoor crops (including peppers, tomatos, and various illegal substances...) supplement their atmospheres with CO2, either from a compressed gas tank or special propane burners. The websites for somefirms that supply this stuff are amusingly vague about the applications. For your reading pleasure... The composition of dry air at sea level is 78.084 Mol% N2 (nitrogen) 20.948 Mol% O2 (oxygen) 0.0314 Mol% CO2 (carbon dioxide - and a scary coincidence with PI....) And the rest a bunch of other stuff, including argon, krypton, neon, helium, methane, and hydrogen. Needless to say, we don't need to be too worried about plants sucking all the oxygen out of the air, and it becomes obvious why a little extra CO2 can't hurt... Rob Yes, I know I over-simplified. Any plant growing set-up---greenhouse, basement, etc. should have enough air exchange, even through the cracks,that lack of CO2, O2, or any other gas isn't going to be a problem, no matter how many plants are in it--something I should have said in my first post. J. Del Col |
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