[SpaceProgram] Fwd: Space Farmers: LEDs As Key To NASA's Permanent Lunar Life Support - Forbes

[Huei Ming Tan]

In case someone has a container to spare:
http://www.fastcoexist.com/1680389/this-company-wants-to-grow-your-vegetables-in-a-warehouse#1

And speaking of algae, I was introduced to Jon Trent some time ago. He's
trying to scale up his project to clean wastewater using algae.
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/research/OMEGA/index.html

Warmest regards,
Huei Ming


On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 10:53 AM, Stuart Young <cefiar at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 6 September 2012 12:14, cole santos <cksantos85 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> @paul Supposedly it only works around a peak of 300nm with no effect
>> within 50nm above and below. If you can find cheap leds in that spectrum
>> you will be a millionaire in the waste water treatment industry they need
>> just under 300nm for uv sterilizers, which is the major power consumer on
>> treatment plants. Standard is florescent.
>>
>> @Mate I agree some plants absorb some light more than others, but in
>> general you need blue and red. There are two basic chlorophyll types, A
>> and B, and each has a red and blue adsorption peak. A is around 430
>> (blue/violet) and 660 (deep red) while B is around 460 (blue) and 630 (red).
>>  http://www.biologie.uni-hamburg.de/b-online/e24/3.htm Green/yellow is
>> mostly useless. The thing with leds is they produce a very tight band of
>> wavelength and plants only respond to a tight band of red/blue so you can
>> buy led lighting and get screwed. Marine fish tanks get algae blooms with
>> 660nm so I think that would be a good place to start with tests on algae.
>> Plant growers seem to be using 630nm. But 630's are brighter than 660's of
>> the same power output so it could just be a power issue.
>>
>> Here's some info i got on fish tank forum. (They seem to be the only guys
>> trying to grow algae (marine) with leds, outside of academia behind pay
>> walls.
>>
>> "One other interesting result that someone posted was that they were
>> running a scrubber with an array of 6 3W 660 reds for about 6 months, and
>> when they added one 455 blue LED to the mix, the growth changed
>> dramatically, not so much in bulk but in form; the algae 'roots' where it
>> was attached to the screen/substrate became substantially stronger (harder
>> to scrape the algae off) and the algae strands thenselves became thicker.
>> This suggests that the blue component does not so much contribute to
>> overall growth as it does to some other strengthening factor."
>>
>> Supposedly a and b are for absorbing light at different times of day....
>> I dunno, but I do agree that the field is ripe for hackerspace
>> exploitation.
>>
>
> This might be useful reading:
>
> http://lib.tkk.fi/Diss/2008/isbn9789512295029/
>
> There are LED based plant lighting systems out there, but they're all
> horribly expensive, mainly from what tends to be the UV component (but in
> some cases just cos they can).
>
> --
> Stuart Young (aka Cefiar)
>
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