Interesting thought James. That reminds me of those large cork sealed glass bottles that were popular in the 70's for growing plants in. The water you added would not escape but just condense on the internal glass surface and then run back down to the roots of the plants. So in a totally enclosed plant room, whether it be hyperbaric or not, you could have condensation collectors. However on a submarine I don't think you would have any lack of water to use to water your plants. Keep in mind that high humidity areas are prone to fungus unless they are hyperbaric and with in a specific pressure and O2 range.
That reminds me of another thought, that you don't have to have a designated plant room to have plants in ones submarine. You can have mini growing areas that are open to the room or enclosed behind glass in terrariums or the like. Like in the galley for your cooking herbs or just to look at as well as absorb CO2 and produce O2. Having nicely lighted plants in a room is good for the mind as well. Also for some plants the light coming in from the viewports when surfaced or near the surface, might very well be enough for them to thrive.
Regards,
Brent Hartwig
Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 09:13:41 -0800
From: grandadmiraldonitz@yahoo.com
Subject: RE: [PSUBS-MAILIST] live aboard submarine yacht - affordable
To: personal_submersibles@psubs.org
Just a novice thought, but why not use the condensation to water the hydroponics plants? James
Brent Hartwig <brenthartwig@hotmail.com> wrote:
Hi Wil,
You bring up a good point that I don't hear talked about much for promoting the sale of Yacht Submarines, of having a safe harbor in open seas. I usually just think about it for my personal live aboard sub. The ussubmarines.com site uses the the phrase, " The Safest Place on Earth" to promote there luxury
sub designs. When ever I mention my interest in building a live aboard sub to someone that is not familiar with subs, they ask me why I would want to do that, and I usually start with asking them, "haven't you watched the movie "The Perfect Storm?" and they start to get the idea. According to the makers of the movie, they over exaggerated the size of the wave in the movie, but regardless of that, there are still plenty of deadly waves to deal with.
I just recently was looking at the cover of a sailing magazine and noticed that all the faces of the crew on the racing sailboat that was on the cover, were red from wind burn. It didn't look like much fun to me. One thing I do think about is how at times storms can go on for weeks at a time and so if you plan to stay down that long you will need allot of stored O2, Sofnolime or the like, just to name a few. Of course in a quality built sub you could surface for a short time in allot of storms to take
in fresh air and then go back down, but if your air systems are up to par in the first place, the O2 and CO2 levels will be good when you surface so there wouldn't be any bad air to exchange, unless you had depleted your supplies.
I had thought about a air recirculation buoy with a triple redundant automatic shut of system to keep water out of the intake and exhaust, for shallower diving to weather a storm or just overnight sleeping, so you wouldn't use up your stored O2 and CO2 scrubber supplies. Basically it's a flexible snorkel that would be best for a static positioning of the sub. If you can anchor or bottom out while submerged in a current, you can generate power from turbines. Here is a link to one interesting water turbine design.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0517-05.htm
If you can use a wind or water turbines and/or solar panels to run a O2 producing device, that would go
along way to giving the sub a longer endurance overall. Since scrubber pellets can be pretty expensive in some places, it's to bad we don't usually have enough extra power when submerged to run metal halide or other full spectrum lights long term for specific types of air and/or aquatic plants that convert CO2 to O2 quickly, so you would only need the Sofnolime as a backup as well as conserve you compressed O2 supplies. I heard that NASA is testing a number of closed loop systems, using plants in the system for the planned trip to Mars, to remove CO2, filter water, recycle human waste, and produce food and O2.
Perhaps if you have large enough battery banks and can produce power from renewable sources, you could have enough power for lighting and heating your plants while submerged. My experience with plants and animals tells me you need allot of plants per person to pull it off, or some pretty amazing plants. Plant's can produce CO2 when in the dark, so
keep that in mind. There was a sealed Biosphere project some years back, I believe it was in Arizona, that tried to seal in some people and animals, and they got caught bringing in fresh air from outside. I remember thinking to myself that they had to many people and animals for the amount of flora in the enclosed system. It's a little like aquariums, you don't have to do water changes if you have enough plants, and a good enough biological filter system for the amount of fish in the tank. But usually people want loads of fishes, so they have to do water changes to remove the excess ammonia, nitrates, and nitrites. Also since allot of modern tanks have such close fitting tops to reduce evaporation, fish jumping out, and salt creep in saltwater tanks, they reduce gas exchange on the surface. So it's possible to kill the fish from to much CO2 in the water, even when there is plenty of O2 in the
water.
Even if you didn't use renewable energy to charge your battery banks for being used for plant lighting and heating, it might be worth doing some math to figure out how much each stored KW of power cost if it comes from a generator, then figure how to produce an educated guess of what the KW usage of lighting and heating a greenhouse space would be that would produce X amount of O2 and correspondingly absorb X amount of CO2. Then figure in what your bought O2 and Sofnolime pellets cost for the same about of O2 produced from the greenhouse and correspondingly how much Sofnolime is used to absorb the same about of CO2. With good quality insulation for the greenhouse room and some energy efficient lighting like full spectrum florecents and/or some new type of full spectrum LED lighting you might come out ahead cost wise, buying diesel instead of buying compressed O2 and
Sofnolime or the like. Also you may be in places of the world you cannot acquire compressed O2 and/or Sofnolime. But diesel is usually allot easier to find. You might even choose to use bio-diesel.
A added bonus of having a greenhouse in your live aboard sub, might be having fresh veggies to go with your fish dinners. Perhaps even some strawberries for your cereal. ;)' If you make your greenhouse hyperbaric and add one additional atmosphere of pressure, your plants should grow at a much faster pace then they would normally. You have to pump in the CO2 of course. I'm planning on converting a 500 gallon used propane tank to test this out. That would change the math a fair bit.
Regards,
Brent
Hartwig
> Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2007 17:25:35 -0800
> From: clientes@tolimared.com
> To: personal_submersibles@psubs.org
> Subject: Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] live aboard submarine yacht - affordable
>
> Hello Carsten,
>
> Of course they send their megayachts across the ocean to live aboard
> in a protected marina on the other side - this is why a sub-yacht that
> can have a quiet harbor in open water is so desireable in yachting
> community. You must go big (like a cruiseship) or you must go below.
>
> A 20+ rooms is not a problem - submerged concrete cilinders of 24m
> diameter are in use at open sea at Troll platform as we speak -
> performing 300m diving depth. So this is proven tecnology. Only thing
> missing is somebody putting things together and pull it off.
>
> Here in Cartagena i have drydocking of 120m x 22m installed and
> available from my shipyard partners - NAVTECH and COTECMAR - so if
> somebody funds it i can build it. This should be big enough even for a
> billionaire to find space for a king size bed and armani shoes...
>
> I am sure we can do it with a normal megayacht budget. Counting on
> your partnership when the first order comes in - working on that...
>
> Your bread job and your hobby could come neatly together in such a project.
>
> Let me hear your thoughts...
>
> Kindest Regards,
>
> Wilfried Ellmer
> (www.concretesubmarine.com)
>
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