A few studies have come out from the likes of MIT/Berkley making strong claims about the link between air quality (CO2 and particulates specifically) and cognition. Given the state of modern scientific discourse (and my personal bias against Berkley), I'd like to make a constant CO2-free air supply for myself and do some quality uncertified "your own research"
I've been looking at using a CO2 adsorber system (pic rel) with some kind of medical or lab-grade air compressor, but I'm having a hard time finding data on contaminants that might get into the system with this approach. Advice on adsorbers, compressors, or scrubbers in general would be greatly appreciated.
It's probably easier to just mix your own N2 and O2.
Definitely, but I'm trying to make something that I could use constantly for long periods of time, and the cost and logistics of tanks is prohibitive. Hundreds of hours of use per month most likely.
>the cost and logistics of tanks is prohibitive
cheaper and easier than shuffling around sodium hydroxide
anesthesia machines that recirculate over lithium hydroxide are already a thing
but $$$
The adsorbers I'm looking at use regenerative palladium plates to separate co2 from compressed air, the co2 basically sticks to the plates and then you heat the plates to cook it off. All happens automatically. Thread is convincing me to look more into tanks though, I'll have to see what tank rental places are around
Hey now this is pretty cool, simple system. I'm mostly concerned with cooling the air down so I might have to mess with the core a bit, but otherwise this is simple enough that I might as well just give it a go. Might have issues with the ducting as my window is right along a semi-public walkway, but I'm sure I can figure something out
So a PrepHole oxygen tent?
Yeah, basically. The problem is those specific systems don't affect the CO2/particulate content of the air, they only bump the oxygen content, so I'll need a slightly different solution
>don't affect the CO2
>only bump the oxygen content
Hey, I might have a CO2 remover you might like. Runs on solar and some water cooling, IIRC.
Worked this out a few years ago, you need something like 1000 houseplants per person in your household to effectively scrub the CO2 they emit.
Not impossible, but it's gonna keep you busy. Plus at the point you're watering 1-4k plants in your house daily, you may have a bit of a moisture problem.
If the CO2 concentration in your dwelling is already higher than the ambient outdoor CO2 concentration, you're better putting time into deploying ventilation and heat exchange technologies. You only need to look at CO2 scrubbing once you get better than ambient.
That's a good point, I'm considering it too depending on practicality of other methods. I live in the middle of a city which regularly places on the "worst air quality in the us" rankings, so there's some clear limitations to what I can accomplish in that sense. I'll pursue that method further if this one turns out prohibitively expensive or difficult.
Any advice on temperature regulating incoming air? I suppose I could just mount a bunch of AC units into a window lol
A DIY Air-to-air heat recovery ventilator is actually pretty easy to put together, bunch of how-to info on youtube and similar. It's basically a box with 4 holes, a heat exchanger core made out of small copper pipes, and a standard air duct fan to move the air through. You can build it to mount onto a window so you don't need to modify the building, and the materials list is basically fan, corflute for the box, a few meters of small-gauge copper pipe for the core, and maybe a bit of ducting. No fricking around with liquids or gases.
You'll never get 100% heat recovery but it's a lot better than just ventilating straight from outside and having to constantly re-heat the space.
A few detail points to consider:
- You probably want to add some filtering on the incoming air. Just a box filter, or you could take it further with a carbon filter etc. This will make it harder to move the air so you'll pay more in running costs working the fans harder, but if your outside air is city trash it's good to clean it up a bit.
- You'll get some moisture buildup around your exchanger core because moisture will be extracted from the air as it changes temperature. If you're building a basic box out of corflute and tape, it's not too hard to figure out where to site a drain hole once you see where the moisture is building up. A removable core that you can periodically clean is a good idea.
- It's best to separate the two outdoor pipes so you're not pulling your exhaust air straight back into the building. Same with the indoor pipes. Adding some ducting to the unit to move these away from each other is pretty simple.
What's the corrugated plasstic for?
In that particular version, they use stacked corflute arranged in an alternating pattern as the heat exchanger core. So the incoming and outgoing air pass each other but don't mix, and the heat transfers between them.
This is a cheap simple way to build a core, but plastic is more of an insulator so not an ideal material to build a core out of. An alternative way to do it is to use small copper pipes mounted in a box frame, all going in the same direction. One flow of air passes through the pipes east/west, the other flow of air passes around the pipes north/south. Much better transfer of heat in the same dimensions.
Copper pipes are an order of magnitude more expensive than a few sheets of corflute, however.
>If the CO2 concentration in your dwelling is already higher than the ambient outdoor CO2 concentration
The CO2 concentration in human lungs is usually about 4%, roughly a hundred times that of outdoor air.
Thank you for that entirely irrelevent information.
>thinks variation of parts per million matters for health and wellbeing
>variation of 100x that with every breath
This, your idea is moronic op sorry, the air is 0.02% CO2, bad air quality more means smoke and chemicals in the air and or carbon monoxide. Also probably being an amerilard your diet is full of seed oils, flour cereals sugar and corn syrup.. the replacement of which with more meat would massively move the needle on your health.. check out Low carb down under.
Seems like a lot of work to avoid houseplants.
Houseplants are fundamentally a satanic concept.
Houseplants don't really take much CO2 away from the air. Remember that the carbon is only being removed from the air if it is being turned into part of the plant, so unless your plant is growing continuously and turning your house into a jungle then it basically won't do jack shit
I grow culinary herbs in my kitchen.
If you are going to be serious about this project start by finding out what you are working with.
I own
https://www.amazon.com/Aranet4-Home-Temperature-Ink-Configuration/dp/B07YY7BH2W/
(which i got for a lot cheaper off amazon)
and use it to figure out exactly how bad the air gets in my house and how to fix the airflow. It tracks the air quality overtime and works killer.
https://www.amazon.com/INKBIRDPLUS-Temperature-Relative-Humidity-Indoor-CO2-Meter-Wine-Cellars/dp/B09MRX4F12/
This is one I used to use, no logging but its a lot cheaper.
Anything near 400ppm is basically outside in an open field of grass levels so trying to get there should be the goal. Typically even in shit cities the air isn't that bad for Co2 but is full of contaminates. Making a box fan air filter fitted with merv 13+ is way cheaper than a free standing air filter and works better too. Just cleaning out the toxic shit in the air will help your health more than trying to lower the Co2.
https://cleanaircrew.org/box-fan-filters/ Here is a good site with designs.
Stick a furnace filter in your window and open it up, open a window on the other side and stick a fan in it. Run your air filter and then check the Co2 levels. If they don't drop to acceptable levels its Algae farm time.
>A few studies have come out from the likes of MIT/Berkley making strong claims about the link between air quality (CO2 and particulates specifically) and cognition.
source?
>https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2656198/
>Elevated CO2 levels affect development, motility, and fertility and extend life span in Caenorhabditis elegans
just get a medical o2 concentrator.
CO2 is good for you, you store way more co2 in your body than what is in the air. Try hyperventilating, the loss of consciousness you will experience is a direct result from the removal of co2 in your body, which will cause hypoxia in your cells (co2 exhanges with oxygen from hemoglobin via the bohr effect). If you want less co2, just hyperventilate slightly.
rebreathers already exist.