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The dictionary definition of fertilizer is: “any substance used to enrich the soil, especially a chemical or manure.” Proof carbon dioxide should be considered a fertilizer is easily obtained with aqueous solutions of the gas. And, the evidence has been on the lap of science for many years, but ignored! We have long known that "humus soils" were the most fertile of any and they have long been used as potting soils and amendments, but very little, if any, serious work was done to determine why these soils were so good.
Now it should be clear that rotting material in humus produces carbon dioxide that the plants were absorbing directly through the roots, but this fact has not become part of the accepted knowledge of the physiology of plants. The only problem with humus is that it is a limited resource. When decay has run its' course the soil is no longer better than any other and so humus would have appeared to have failed. And, having to replace humus every season would be very expensive so it was overlookable.
Simple trials demonstrate that carbonated water increases growth significantly compared with distilled water or rain, but there are problems in using water as the delivery medium for carbon dioxide in full scale agriculture. The major difficulty is that CO2 is not very soluble in water.
Only 1.45 grams of CO2 are soluble in one liter of water. Using water as a delivery medium is very inefficient as only 0.145% of the solution is the desired substance. Where water is available in soil to the extent of 425 pounds per cubic yard one foot below the surface it makes much more sense to deliver the gas directly and rely on solubility to put it in solution and then absorbed by plant roots.
The percentage of water increases with depth in the soil. At 100 feet it may rise to 30% and while recoverable may not be of sufficient quantity to support traditional agriculture if that layer is very shallow. But, with soil delivery of carbon dioxide and the reduced transpiration it brings we will convert "dry lands" to full cultivation. Genetically engineered plants will eventually reduce water demand to 4% of that now used by cultivated plants.
The Greenhouse Case
The greenhouse is a special case where we recommend carbonating water used for the plants as it will increase production substantially and permit the cooling ventilation to be use without losing CO2 or getting into trouble under the coming source restrictions. We claim this use of CO2 in our system patents as it has never before been recommended or used to our knowledge. Saturating water with CO2 can be done quickly and easily in a tank that can take a few hundred pounds pressure and the provided under high pressure with a simple NatroX™ generator.