DESIGN AND EVALUATION OF SMART VENTILATION SYSTEM FOR MANAGING THE BIOENVIRONMENT OF THE HYDRPONICS SYSTEMS

Hegab, Khaled

doi:10.21608/mjae.2018.95604

DESIGN AND EVALUATION OF SMART VENTILATION SYSTEM FOR MANAGING THE BIOENVIRONMENT OF THE HYDRPONICS SYSTEMS

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Khaled Hegab

Agric. Eng. Dept., Faculty of Agric., Cairo University, Egypt.

10.21608/mjae.2018.95604

Abstract

From the technical, environmental and economic perspectives, using air conditioning systems (ACS) to manage the bioenvironmental conditions inside the sprouting chambers is considered a common mistake. Therefore, the main objective of this research is to design and evaluate a smart evaporative cooling system for executing efficient ventilation and conserving a suitable bioenvironment. Multi-stage smart evaporative cooling system (MSECS) was designed and installed to manage bioenvironment conditions inside the chamber. This system consists of Multi-stage evaporative cooling unit, smart control unit and air exhaust unit. To evaluate the proposed ventilation system two types of trials were executed. The first deals with temperature uniformity through the chamber and the second deals with production quantity and quality. Dry bulb temperature T_db was measured, analyzed and drawn to study the temperature uniformity. Three levels of relative humidity ratios RH% and three types of multi-stage smart evaporative cooling systems were studied through complete randomize trial. Physical and chemical properties of the green fodder production were laboratory measured and statistically analyzed. The trials results statistical and graphical analysis revealed that: (1) Using MSECS with four exhaust fans led to significant decrease at (p<0.05) in the T_dbvariance comparing with the ACS. (2) Using MSECS with one or two exhaust fans hasn’t significant effect at (p<0.05) on the T_dbvariance comparing with the ACS. (3) Using MSECS with four exhaust fans led to in-crowd and uniformity of T_db contouring lines comparing with the ACS. (4) Using MSECS with four exhaust fans led to significant increase at (p<0.05) in the desired properties of the green fodder such as percentage of dry matter Dm and crude protein Cp, and the in desired properties such as percentage of crude fiber C_f and Ash.
Therefore, the research conclusion is substitution of the ACS by smart MSECS with four exhaust fans for managing the bioenvironmental conditions of sprouting chambers at T_db 20^oC and RH75%.

Keywords

Main Subjects

Biosystems Engineering

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