Commercial greenhouses with more
than five times the carbon dioxide as in air are enriched to 0.20% CO2, 2,000 parts per million, with
great success. The gas is made with propane burning carbon dioxide generators. Full systems with regulators are sold by manufacturers
claiming 30% increases in plant production, but actually achieving much more.
No special breathing equipment is needed
by the nursery workers as carbon dioxide is not harmful to
animal or human life until the concentration is over 15,000 parts per million,
1.5%. There are natural sources of CO2 that could produce huge amounts of CO2, but it would take a massive string of catastrophies to release such amounts of CO2 to our atmosphere.
CO2 Greenhouse History
In
the 2006 fall issue of Policy Review, author Sylvan H. Wittwer wrote: “American
commercial greenhouses have used aerial carbon dioxide fertilization for
tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, flower and foliage plants, and bedding plants for
at least 30 years. The benefits of this enrichment were first discovered by
nurserymen in Germany 100
years ago, and the practice is widely used in Sweden,
Denmark, Holland,
Germany, Australia, and Japan,
as well as the United States
and Canada.
Carbon dioxide enrichment is economical when greenhouse vents can be closed. It
is therefore used most often in winter in northern areas and in the southerly
latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere.”
This
same article documents that these systems are not usable in the summer in much
of Europe as the green houses get too hot when
closed to keep the CO2 inside. This would be a good place for a simple underground SCAF system. Where
they are hydroponic this would be a good place to carbonate the water
and apply CO2 directly to the roots. We have included it in our patents.
Our Natrox™ system
is ideal to carbonate greenhouse soil or water with the addition of a small,
simple generator and tanks capable of holding a few hundred pounds of
pressure. This sysetm will permit the use of CO2in
the summer when most north American greenhouses have to be opened
for cooling. Making carbon dioxide with propane generators for
winter will probably continue as the equipment is either installed
or sold to the industry already familiar with it.
Another Eden?
Carbon dioxide concentration in the Carboniferous Age
(359,000,000 BC to 299,000,000 BC) forests of great antiquity was about half again to twice that in modern greenhouses. Popularly
known as “an era of Eden,”
the forests, savannas and seas were much more lush and productive than ours
today, but modern environmentalists become hysterical and violent when asked if this would be to return to such an era.
Demonstrations with tented fruit trees in atmospheres
boosted to 700 ppm CO2 (0.070%) resulting in young trees two to three times the
size of those growing in normal atmospheres have been done many times in the US,
England and Europe. They are
documented at the “CO2 Science” website: http://www.co2science.org/
