Biosphere Community

Ideally, in terms of most long term workability, a community of 300 individuals is about right - practically to start out, or before pole shift I don't see this many individuals being able to get together and agree on what to do. What is it going to be like to try and get 300 people to work together during the last months? I think you are right to think big. I have been thinking much smaller with a group size of about 10-30. If we can build the solutions scaleable then we solve both. Now after the pole shift, I see smaller groups working together to form bigger communities. But I perceive preparations before the pole shift being done, on the average, with much distrust of big groups. Maybe I am wrong.

Offered by Mike.

I consider 300 a good minimum for a community size and skill base.

Caloric Intake

The USRDA for caloric intake for the average adult is 2500 Calories a day. This converts to 2.9 Kilowatt-hours, over a 24 hour day that is 121 Watts of power required for each person, not too bad, but then it gets hairy when you start factoring in the conversion efficiencies. If the conversion of electrical power to light energy is say 25% and photosynthesis is 1% efficient that requirement jumps to a continuous power requirement for each person of almost 50 kW! Unacceptable, unless you have access to a small nuclear reactor. The theoretical limit to photosynthetic efficiency is about 30%, lets say with the photobioreactor we can get that up to 10%, the requirement then becomes about 5 kW, large but a lot more manageable.

 

Heat Exchange

Inefficiencies will literally kill you. Heat is not going to be a problem, getting rid of heat is going to be a problem, I want it to be cold outside, this will give us the opportunity to reclaim your waste heat in the form of useable energy, maybe 25% with a good system, this further reduces power generation requirements to 3.6 kW per person. I am hoping this can be achieved through wind power generation, if it can not then we are faced with having to increase efficiencies, reduce caloric intake, supplementing with storage in biomass, or a combination of all three. For a community of about 300 plan on being able to generate about a megawatt. The bulk of power is going to be chewed up by the photobioreactors, it will only require a small fraction by comparison to run task lighting, pumps, communications equipment etc.

 

Recycling Sewage

I am including recycled waste, where it does not introduce new energy into the system, a finite amount of biomass would eventually all be converted to tailings. You can use the worm tailings as fertilizer.

Offered by Steve