# Control of habitat's carbon dioxide level by biomass burning

## TL;DR

This paper proposes a scalable, low-tech method for controlling CO2 levels in a closed space habitat by burning agricultural waste, enabling autonomous biosphere regulation without large biomass imports.

## Contribution

It introduces a novel biomass burning approach to regulate CO2 in space habitats, ensuring stable atmosphere control with minimal external resources.

## Key findings

- The method effectively maintains CO2 levels in a closed ecosystem.
- Burning biomass does not alter oxygen partial pressure.
- Initial CO2 can be generated from asteroid-derived carbon.

## Abstract

Consider a free-space settlement with a closed ecosystem. Controlling the habitat's carbon dioxide level is a nontrivial problem because the atmospheric carbon buffer per biosphere area is smaller than on Earth. Here we show that the problem can be solved by burning agricultural waste. Waste biomass is stored and dried, and burned whenever plant growth has lowered the atmospheric carbon dioxide level so that replenishment is needed. The method is robust, low-tech and scalable. The method also leaves the partial pressure of oxygen unchanged. In the initial growth phase of the biosphere, one can obtain the carbon dioxide by burning sugar or carbon, which can be sourced from carbonaceous asteroid materials. This makes it possible to bootstrap the biosphere without massive biomass imports from Earth.