Abstract:Purpose:This study was conducted to analyze the air flow characteristics in a plant factory with different inlet and outlet locations using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Methods: In this study, the flow was assumed to be a steady-state, incompressible, and three-dimensional turbulent flow. A realizable k-ε turbulent model was applied to show more reasonable results than the standard model. A CFD software was used to perform the numerical simulation. For validation of the simulation model, a prototype pla… Show more
“…On the solar dryer design, a study by Mohd Noh et al, [13] shows that CFD simulation was able to simulate and optimize the intermittent ventilation that able to dry the product faster with lower energy consumption. The previous study has proven the accuracy of CFD simulation and the potential to be the efficient methods to substitute physical experiments to analyze plant growth environmental condition and optimized growing structure design [14][15][16]. A study by Fan et al, [17] on the CFD simulation of the airflow uniformity in the plant factory shows that the measured value and the simulated value of air velocity were in a good agreement where the average relative error was only 15%.…”
Cube-Grow was developed by MARDI to promote urban agriculture to the urban population. The product enables urban people to grow their vegetables with limited space. The initial test run of the system shows that the plant growth inside the structure was below expectation. The problem arises due to a lack of airflow or improper ventilation inside the structure. Optimum ventilation or airflow is crucial for plant growth as it enhances evapotranspiration at the leaf area to promote optimum plant growth. Therefore, this study aims to increase the airflow inside the Cube-Grow and find the best location for the air hole. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation was used in this study the analyse the effect of adding an air hole to the airflow characteristic inside the Cube-Grow. CFD also was used to select the best location to place the air hole. 3 option of air hole location was analysed and the results were compared with the existing design. The initial CFD simulation results were compared with the actual measurement data before it was used for further analysis. The result shows that adding an air hole increases overall airflow inside the Cube-Grow. Option 3 was chosen as the best location for the air hole as it produces a uniform and higher airflow inside the Cube-Grow. The study proved that CFD was able to be used to optimize the design of Cube-Grow before the actual prototype was built.
“…On the solar dryer design, a study by Mohd Noh et al, [13] shows that CFD simulation was able to simulate and optimize the intermittent ventilation that able to dry the product faster with lower energy consumption. The previous study has proven the accuracy of CFD simulation and the potential to be the efficient methods to substitute physical experiments to analyze plant growth environmental condition and optimized growing structure design [14][15][16]. A study by Fan et al, [17] on the CFD simulation of the airflow uniformity in the plant factory shows that the measured value and the simulated value of air velocity were in a good agreement where the average relative error was only 15%.…”
Cube-Grow was developed by MARDI to promote urban agriculture to the urban population. The product enables urban people to grow their vegetables with limited space. The initial test run of the system shows that the plant growth inside the structure was below expectation. The problem arises due to a lack of airflow or improper ventilation inside the structure. Optimum ventilation or airflow is crucial for plant growth as it enhances evapotranspiration at the leaf area to promote optimum plant growth. Therefore, this study aims to increase the airflow inside the Cube-Grow and find the best location for the air hole. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation was used in this study the analyse the effect of adding an air hole to the airflow characteristic inside the Cube-Grow. CFD also was used to select the best location to place the air hole. 3 option of air hole location was analysed and the results were compared with the existing design. The initial CFD simulation results were compared with the actual measurement data before it was used for further analysis. The result shows that adding an air hole increases overall airflow inside the Cube-Grow. Option 3 was chosen as the best location for the air hole as it produces a uniform and higher airflow inside the Cube-Grow. The study proved that CFD was able to be used to optimize the design of Cube-Grow before the actual prototype was built.
“…In order to improve the uniformity of the air flow across the plants' canopy, literature [14] studies several arrangement and design of perforated air tube. Literature [15] experimentally studied two cases for controlling air flow devices to minimize the temperature of upper and lower beds and to promote crop growth. Since this paper mainly focuses on the MATLAB model for evaluating the HVAC performance, the detail for the CFD model is not discussed further.…”
“…CFD has been widely used to study ventilation and climate uniformity in greenhouses (Bartzanas et al, 2004;Boulard & Wang, 2002;Bournet & Boulard, 2010;Lee et al, 2013;Tamimi et al, 2013). CFD studies to analyse ventilation in indoor plant factory are increasing (Baek et al, 2016;Lim & Kim, 2014;Moon et al, 2014) but further studies for evaluating air-distribution system design alternatives in indoor plant factory which are required to improve climate uniformity, especially for large-scale commercial indoor plant factories are still lacking. Therefore, this study was conducted with the focus on evaluating air-distribution system design alternatives tending to uniformity in respect to air temperature and airflow.…”
Airflow is important in plant factories as it is responsible for the air exchange inside the structure to create desired growing conditions for plants. A uniform airflow distribution enhances photosynthesis and the transpiration process of the plants. In this study, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis was used to analyse the airflow distribution inside a commercial scale plant factory developed by MARDI. CFD plays an important role in designing and optimisation of control environment structure in the agriculture industry. Many studies have proved that the CFD technique is able to predict the internal climate of the plant factory in the designing stage before the actual plant was built. This study was conducted to analyse the airflow characteristics in a plant factory with different inlet and outlet locations. The study also analyses the effect of different inlet location to the overall temperature distribution inside the plant factory. Validation of the developed CFD model was carried out by comparing simulation results with experimental data. The validation result showed an acceptable percentage error between simulated and actual data. The validated CFD model was then used to analyse different inlet locations that can produce more uniform airflow and temperature distribution inside the plant factory. From the simulation results, it shows that the new inlet location was able to produce more uniform airflow and temperature distribution as compared to existing inlet location.
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