Wie viele Zimmerpflanzen braucht man in einem Zimmer, um sagen zu können, dass gleich viel Sauerstoff hergestellt wird, wie von einer Person verbraucht wird?

Hello,

what you need to say:

It takes as much oxygen as is bound in the CO2 that the person exhales. Carbon dioxide, CO2, is a molecule consisting of a carbon (chemical symbol C) and two oxygen atoms (chemical symbol O). You should therefore measure how much CO2 the person exhales. Or you can derive it:

If plants release oxygen, then as a waste product of photosynthesis. In this process, they split CO2 from the air. They build up the carbon contained in organic substances which release oxygen. (Yes, I know that it is more complicated in truth, there is also H2O in the game, but as a result it is true!) Some of the energy-rich organic substances that the plants have built up can be used as food. What a person is causing CO2 corresponds to what they are metabolising food. We like to talk about “burning calorie”, but basically that is really exactly what happens: in our body runs controlled, without great heat and without flames, a process that corresponds to when carbon-containing substances are burned. The energy that becomes free can use our body. As in combustion, oxygen is consumed and CO2 is produced as a product which we exhale. It should be borne in mind that we cannot completely metabolize our food, that we “unburnt” part of it. This would have to be deducted, then it would be possible to estimate on the basis of the consumed foods what the person released from CO2 and consumed oxygen for it. In short, the amount of food that the person has eaten minus what she has left out again, so much biomass must have produced the plants, so much must they have grown, then it fits.

As you know, this cannot happen in real time: photosynthesis can only be done on the day when it is bright. In winter, the days are shorter, and also many room plants will keep something like winter rest. We use more energy in winter, so we need more oxygen. And also the plants themselves: as they also live, they also need oxygen, as they also operate metabolism, and burn some of the organic substances produced themselves again. This also happens at night – in this time plants consume oxygen while they do not produce at the same time. So your oxygen balance can only be considered useful over a longer period, for example over a year. In between, there are always phases in which the plants produce less oxygen than they consume themselves, for which it is much more in others.

This is, however, as long as the room is not absolutely airtight, and that is not a room, no reason to worry. Fortunately, there is air movement on earth, oxygen-rich air mixes with “consumer”. In the free nature, now, at these temperatures practically no oxygen is produced, the plants themselves consume a bit, even if they are in winter rest. Nonetheless, we have good air out there, and nobody suffocates there!