well I don't have a garage and live in a busy neighborhood so using actual co2 is too conspicuous for me sadly.even if it would work, I doubt the quantity of co2 in a bottle is worth the money you pay for it.
well I don't have a garage and live in a busy neighborhood so using actual co2 is too conspicuous for me sadly.
ive always wanted to try this but could never find any soda without salts in it. thats where the idea falls short i think. most people dont look on the bottle and see that there is like 15-35% sodium in club soda. that will kill plants really fast esp under HIDS. there is another way to produce CO2 for small grows. still trying to figure out how to regulate the reaction, but basicly adding H2O2 to active carbon will produce CO2 gas. im still playing with it so i know it has minimal affect to the plants, but potential is there. thought i'd share a lil better living through chemistry
I did some quick research.
Lets start with some facts
- The amount of C02 in the air is about 0.04% (0.0004 as a fraction)
- The amount of C02 recommended for C02 supplementation of MJ is 0.12% to 0.15%.
- C02 supplementation is more effective with more light.
- A 2'x4'x4' box contains contains 32 cubic feet of air - or about 906 liters
- thus a 2'x4'x4' box (the size of combined veg and flower in your cab) contains about 0.36 liters (0.04%*906) of C02
- According to this guy (http://www.science-house.org/CO2/activities/co2/soda.html), a 16oz bottle of soda contains one liter of C02
- Thus if you could get all of the CO2 out of the soda bottle to displace air in the box you could get the amount of C02 in the box up to 1.36 liters (the original 0.36 plus 1).
- This would leave the concentration of CO2 in the box at 0.15% which is right about the recommended level.
Sounds good right?
Well it is not so good considering that the 2'x4'x4' box is going to need to be exhausted frequently - or continuously in absence of a timer or controller. Even if you could let it rock for 30 minutes before exhausting on a timer, you would have to put in a soda bottle worth of C02 in the box every 30 minutes to achieve the recommended level of supplementation. Also you probably can't get the liter of C02 contained in a 16oz bottle of soda water into the box by misting; some is going to escape & 16oz is hell of a lot of misting for a few plants.
What this suggest to me is that spraying soda water on plants is not an effective way to supplement CO2.