Engineered ‘Superplant’ Cleans Indoor Air Like 30 Regular Plants

If you have helpful data, please share. I was just skimming as you kindly pointed out and would love some concrete numbers other than holistic senses of the goodwill of houseplants, $150 houseplants or others.

Actually, the only other study I’ve seen says that houseplants are of zero benefit in regards to VOC purification, but I doubt a startup would invest this much into fraud.

The benefit of outside air is that it is averaged and that open spaces reach more stable equilibriums than artificial spaces.

We just want to use it on earth so we can show how cool we are that we have something from NASA while your "other" friends have Dyson gear.

In that case, just open the windows! Or use a heat exchanger if the temp isn't reasonable outside.

But, I was imagining a house sealed up with perfectly clean air and then "dirty" outside air getting in

A normal person need about 2000 kcalories per day. That's approximately 500g (1/2 kg) (1 pound) of sugar. Eating only sugar is bad, but most carbohydrates and proteins have a similar kcalories to weight ratio.

If the plant absorbs all the CO2 produced by the person, it must rebuild all that sugar back (and store it as cellulose, or starch or even proteins, but again all have a very similar similar kcalories to weight ratio.) So the plant must grow approximately 500g (1/2 kg) (1 pound) per day.

That is like 15kg (30 pounds) per month, that is a weigh of a small child. Or like 150kg (300 pounds) per year that is the weight of one or two adults. Plant's don't grow so much. (Note that you can reduce the weight to one half is the plant only makes oil instead of as cellulose, or starch or even proteins, but it still too high.)

Edit: Self nitpicking: About the reduction of weigh using oil, I used calories per gram instead of carbon per gram.

Oversimplifiying: In sugar the simplified unit is COH2, that has one carbon per 12+16+2=30 atomic units. In oil, the simplified unit is CH2 that has one carbon every 12+2=14 atomic units. So the ratio is aproximately 30/14=2.14 instead of the calories ratio that is 9/4=2.5. Both are very similar, so the end remark is still correct. I'm not sure if it's a coincidence or if I think hard enough about energy per atomic bound it get obvious.

Proteins are harder, because amino acids are more diverse. I left the exact calculation for someone else, but as a rough simplification let's use achain of valine. The building block is C5ONH9 that is a carbon for every (12*5+16+14+9)/5=19.8 atomic units, so it's something in between. Anyway, don't expect your plant to make too much proteins. Even soy overdosed with fertilizer has only like a 15% of proteins.

Carbon in, carbon out. In order for plants to balance that equation they have to grow about a pound of dry mass per day. There’s a reason the space station doesn’t just have a few plants up there instead of an advanced system to scrub and recycle air.

Pothos are pretty much vines, so seems pretty easy to put the pot on a high surface and let them fall down or creep along, unless they're too structurally solid to do that?

"Just one Neo P1, as the company dubbed its initial product, can remove as much pollution from a home’s air as 30 regular plants, the company says. Neo P1 was in development for four years, and is a bioengineered version of a common houseplant called Pothos."

What does this even mean? What is 'pollution' in this claim? Just grow and happily propagate regular pothos which are wonderful plants, and if you need to filter your air... get certified filters?

Only commercial growers license plant patents.

I’m filling a fifth of an acre with purchased plants and it gets expensive quick, especially if you aren’t very very patient. I’m already propagating cuttings of mostly natives and a few herbs to trade with others. Few can afford retail.

Until they grow into the plumbing.