Smart Passive Ambient Control for Indoor Vertical Farming by Simulation

The objective of this research is to design and develop a smart passive temperature control system for indoor vertical farming by simulation and validation of the simulation by empirical study. Passive temperature control (PTC) is defined as the process of controlling or manipulating the temperature of a system with natural heat transfer like conduction, convection, radiation, etc. and the purpose is to reduce energy consumption. Indoor vertical farming (IVF) can be defined as the practice of growing produce stacked one above another in a closed and controlled environment. [1] This research will focus on how the temperature of the water for growing plants can be controlled using PTC. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model is developed to simulate the effect of outside temperature on the indoor air and water and the model is validated with experimental data. The purpose of the CFD model is to simulate the temperature of indoor air and water and any given time of the day and year which will save time and equipment required for actual data collection and to find the optimum period for transferring water from inside to outside as a PTC process and found that, with the combination of material or methods for conduction, convection & radiation can help to balance the indoor temperature from the external ambient temperature. Later, an empirical study is done based on observation and measurement of temperature data of air and water both from inside and outside of the shipping container to validate the simulation. After validating the simulation, a design of experiment (DOE) is developed to find the optimum condition for saving energy and keeping the farming environment livable for plants.