Minimizing Water Use and Developing a Control
Strategy for Evaporative Cooling a Greenhouse in
Semi-Arid
Climate
Nadia Sabeh, PhD Student, Agricultural and
Biosystems Engineering
The primary
goal of this research is to find a cooling control strategy that minimizes
the use of water to evaporatively cool a greenhouse in a semi-arid
climate. In Southern Arizona light is plentiful; however, the hot,
arid summer climate necessitates vigorous cooling of the greenhouse
system. Due to the dry climate, evaporative cooling (cooling the air by
evaporating water) is extremely effective in Southern Arizona. This
research will provide water use data from two main evaporative cooling
systems, fan-and-pad (FP) and high-pressure fog (HPF) under forced and
natural ventilation conditions. Water and energy balance equations
have been used to theoretically determine the evaporative cooling
requirement, and experiments will be conducted to validate these
models. The experiments will all provide information about water use
efficiency (WUE) in an evaporatively cooled greenhouse with tomato
production. Finally, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) will be used
to model the HPF system.
Cooperators: Dr. Chieri Kubota, PLS,
Dr. Gene Giacomelli, ABE, Dr. Christopher Choi, ABE, Dr. Alfredo Huete,
SWES
Technical support: Mr. Stephen Kania, ABE
In progress
2004 – 2006 |
.gif){kind=small}
.gif){kind=small}
.gif){kind=small}