Do houseplants significantly increase oxygen levels in the room?

Question

I know that most house plants emit oxygen due to photosynthesis, but does a plant emit enough oxygen to actually make a noticable difference in a room? I only have a two foot tall plant, and even though it has very large leaves, it's still relativly small. My room is about 300 square feet so I'm sure it doesn't make a difference, but maybe if I got more plants or something it would. Any plant experts out there?

Answer 1

Your room exchanges air with the rest of the building faster than your plant can create a significant concentration gradient of oxygen in your room. However more important to you is the quality of air, the contaminants the plant removes from vapors items inside the house exhaust. Houseplants trap and absorb many pollutants from household products. They do renew the air and they clean it. The larger the total leaf and soil surface area the more oxygen and air scrubbing the plant can achieve. As few as 15 houseplants, in an average-size home, can significantly reduce the quantity of indoor contaminants.
http://www.plantea.com/houseplants.htm
http://www.thegreenguide.com/blog/tow/kw/indoor_air_quality
Some of the best plants for purifying the air are: the Areca "Palm, the Golden Pothos, the Ficus, the Rubber Plant, English Ivy and the ever popular Spider Plant."
http://www.perc.ca/PEN/2000-05/s-battle.html
Peace lily, bamboo palm, English ivy, mums, and gerbera daisies are recommended as air cleaning plants easy to grow.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2004/10/top_5_plants_fo.php

Plant Studies showed air cleansing took place between the soil and air surface. The actual work is done by the "common soil microorganisms" most of which are "known to be capable of biodegrading toxic chemicals when activated by plant root growth."
http://www.practicalasthma.net/pages/topics/aaplants.htm

This should give you a very rough point of comparison to the number of plants needed to supply oxygen for life support.
"A net production of 500 g to 600 g of dry algae per man per day is required for oxygen regeneration" This would be about 850-1000 g wet algae.
http://cedb.asce.org/cgi/WWWdisplay.cgi?7000907
or "17.5 trees per person" to produce ogygen but 20 trees per person to consume the CO2 according to NASA.
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettlement/Contest/Results/96/winner/seis.html

"6 liters of algae water will produce... 600 liters of oxygen, and consume 720 liters of CO2" thus 6 liters of algae water per person will supply sufficient oxygen.
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3g.html

"A British chemist once inhabited a sealed plant growth chamber for 15 days, obtaining all of his oxygen from 30,000 wheat plants. " from article by Amy Snyder
http://www.rso.cornell.edu/scitech/archive/97sum/plants.html

Answer 2

definite it truly is truly wonderful for cories to dart to the exterior and swallow some air. they have an version of their intestines that we could them soak up atmospheric oxygen. They do it regardless of if the water is easily oxygenated. It takes truly severe overstocking and stagnant water for oxygen to be in short furnish. Airstones do little or no. They reason extra water agitation which does reason extra CO2 to flee into the ambience and it reasons fairly extra O2 to dissolve in it. the two way you do no longer want it.

Answer 3

Photosynthesis limitations are:
1. Total leaf area.
2. Light which you supply (Photosynthetic active radiation amount)
3. CO2 amount.

Answer 4

Good question, I have often wondered how big a plant you need to supply yourself with o2