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  Controlled CO2 gas inflow and improved air mixture can help maintain optimum CO2 levels in small indoor greenhouses or grow rooms. These were the lessons learned after working with a client who was attempting to control the CO2 levels in a group of 3 10x20” greenhouses. The client wanted to maintain different consistent CO2 levels in each greenhouse to test the effects on the plants inside. To control the CO2, he used our iSense 1% CO2 Level Controller, a more industrial version of our Day Night CO2 Monitor & Controller for Greenhouses. In one test greenhouse, the CO2 controller...

All infrared (NDIR) CO2 sensors have a dependence on pressure. This is because of the physics principle used to measure CO2 concentration. The NDIR type of sensor measures the IR radiation absorbed by CO2 molecules, which corresponds to the mole concentration. When pressure increases, the number of molecules in a given volume also increases linearly. Conversely, when pressure decreases (higher altitudes, for example) the number of molecules decrease. This app note includes both general information about Senseair sensors and pressure, as well as the equation for computing true CO2 level readings at various pressures useful for any NDIR CO2 sensor....

Which animal waste has the potential to produce the most methane? That was the question posed by Sean Weiss in his “Waste to Watts” science fair project that won the Orange County Science Fair for Alternative Energy. Sean, who currently attends middle school in California, said the idea for the project first occurred to him while he was cleaning up after the family dog. “Before starting this experiment, on one of our family trips I learned that some cow farms in the northern part of the Central California basin were using some of the methane from the waste to power...

Guest post by Michael Forster, Edaphic Scientific Pty Ltd Everyone knows that plants need carbon dioxide to grow. But fewer people know that carbon dioxide can also effect plant transpiration and even the water balance of entire ecosystems and catchments. Even fewer people know that carbon dioxide can affect biodiversity and which plant species are more common than other species. Let’s just leave aside all of the topics on how increasing carbon dioxide is leading to global warming and how this, in turn, is impacting on plant species. Let’s just focus purely on how increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide changes the...