Purify Air the Space-station Way: With Plants
October 19, 2008 – 5:26 am
VENTING AIR THROUGH a sun room full of common houseplants could lower indoor pollutant levels, says a NASA scientist who investigates biological methods of keeping space stations healthy. Now he’s rigged his own energy-efficient house accordingly.B.C. Wolverton is breathing easy, now that he’s equipped his energy-efficient house with an air-purification system. Maintenance of the system is simple: a good watering twice a week and an occasional dose of fertilizer. The main component of his filtering system is a decorative solarium stocked with plants.
It may sound a little primitive, but Wolverton, an environmental engineer at NASA’s National Space Technology Laboratories, developed the plant-based air-purifying system for the proposed U.S. space station. His research shows that some houseplants, especially the spider plant and philodendron, remove formaldehyde and carbon monoxide (potentially dangerous gases that accumulate when there is low air exchange) from ambient air. Energy-efficient houses almost always have low air-exchange rates and occasionally haw pollution problems.
Wolverton is not sure, but he thinks that when the plant leaves photosynthesize, they metabolize these gaseous pollutants as they do carbon dioxide, breaking them down into harmless oxygen and water. Intrigued by this, Wolverton built his own solarium and put 15 to 20 houseplants in it, enough, he says, to purify the air for an 1,800-square-foot house. Although Wolverton didn’t check gas levels before building the sun room, he did afterward, and reports no measurable formaldehyde in his home. “The plants also put a lot of moisture back into the air that is removed by heat in the wintertime,” says Wolverton.
For those who don’t have the space or money for a solarium, Wolverton has another idea that takes advantage of the natural filtering abilities of plant roots. He suggests using hanging spider or philodendron plants potted in a mixture of soil and granular charcoal as mini-filters for offices or apartments. A small air pump hidden in the decorative pot pulls air past the roots every hour or so. Organic pollutants are absorbed by the charcoal, where root microorganisms degrade them. +
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