Quote Originally Posted by oddish
I also found this formula on wiki...

its says, "When air is the source of the oxygen, nitrogen is by far the largest part of the resultant flue gas."

CH4 + 2O2 + 7.52N2 → CO2 + 2H2O + 7.52N2 + heat
I looked it up too on wiki - makes more sense now.

Quote Originally Posted by oddish
I havn't taken chem in a while, so my knowledge is a little limited. I'm having trouble figuring how having high amounts of nitrogen will affect the amount of CO2 produced. The nitrogen doesn't seem to affect the production CO2, it's just the largest product. Do you know for sure if having lots of Nitrogen will affect CO2 yield in combustion reactions?
I didn't mean it like that, that N would affect the quantitative amount (partial pressure) of CO2 produced. It's just a shame that the "flue gas" has to have so much N in it, and drops the percentage of CO2 in the flue gas. The amount of CO2 is unchanged. But this a cheap method of providing CO2 to the plants, not like a CO2 tank.

Quote Originally Posted by oddish
Also, i was doing a little more digging and found that when oxidizing hydrocarbons, lots of CO is produced, some CO2, and little NO is produced. I know that CO is toxic to humans (affects hemoglobins affinity for O2), but I dont' know its effects on plants...
Dead on about about the biochemistry with hemoglobin and CO. CO's affinity to bond to the heme is (i think) 4x stronger than O2's. It takes a while for the CO to break off the heme, and allow it to carry O2 again. Also curious for what that means to a plants biochemistry, if CO is present.

I know Stinky is great with chemistry - if she sees this, maybe she can enlighten us on the topic of CO + plants?

:stoned: