Innovative energy saving and climate control system for greenhouses
Publication Date
July 24, 2020
Creator
Abstract
Greenhouse development becomes more interesting to learn since various policies concerning low carbon emission emerge and researchers compete to apply various technologies, especially those that keep a greenhouse’s indoor temperature and humidity stable. The problem faced by commercial greenhouses in northern climates is the high energy demand; especially for heating, which amounts to 80% of the greenhouse’s total energy demand. Therefore, this research main aim is to provide a sustainable solution to the inherent problems of the greenhouses used in the protected cropping industry by proposing a low-cost energy saving and climate control system.
This work started by reviewing the state of the art of the technologies that have been applied in greenhouses recently in order to achieve the desired and stable humidity, lighting, and temperature in the greenhouse. Various technologies are discussed in this review, including PV Modules, Heat Storage, Heat Pump, Lighting, Wind-catcher, and Insulation system. Some preliminary research including in the theoretical and simulations have been done to give clear result before building the system.
The building has been built based on an energy-saving strategy review for the greenhouse system from the previous report. The building was built in East Leake, Loughborough and collection data has been done for one year. The data retrieved including Heat pump and energy storage system, and PV performance system.
The data analysis found that the seasonal COP heating and cooling of the heat pump varies between 1.48–2.97 and 1.20–3.45, respectively. While the COPsys heating and cooling was found to be 1.51 and 1.55, respectively the system success to maintain the indoor temperature at 18°C in summer and 16°C in other seasons but winter. In winter, the average indoor temperature dropped to 13.5°C due to the very low brine in less than -5°C (the heat pump automatically shut down for safety reasons).
The annual energy delivered for heating and cooling mode was 5175.92 kWh and 3997.82 kWh, respectively. Annual electricity generated by PVs panel found to be 16.56 kWh while the energy used was 62.09 kWh. This means that solar PV could contribute to the utility of 26.7%. Furthermore, the annual heat extracted from the SSBTESS was 13029.62 kWh. However, the proposed system has adapted the heat recovery in practice and successfully reduces the soil thermal imbalance by 2378.85 kWh, annually. The ratio of soil thermal imbalance achieved 32.76% which means the novel proposed system could gain soil heat recovery by 67.24% which is remarkable. Regarding the daylighting inside the greenhouse, the average illumination inside the greenhouse found to be around 1000lux which is three times lower than outside.
Besides the sophisticated technologies used in the greenhouse system, calculating the payback period is important in the industry. Therefore, some calculation has been done and it was found that the discounted and non-discounted payback period was 14th year and 11th year respectively, with an IRR greater than the loan discount rate. Moreover, the greenhouse gas emission could be cut up to 68% compared to the conventional greenhouse.
Item Type
ethesis
Thesis Type
PhD
Supervisors
Subjects (LC)
Associated Schools / Departments
Department of Architecture and Built Environment (UK)
eprints ID
60263
UoN Repository URI
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Name
Thesis-Dewanto ID-4243726 corrected2.pdf
Type
Full-text
Description
Examined
Size
53.85 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
f1aaddf52f0241c194d833677b3e0acb