Microclimatic Control in Confined Agricultural Environment for Plants Cultivation

Abstract

Microclimatic control is having an increasingly widespread in confined agricultural environment. This is important especially for plants cultivations that tolerate thermal and hygrometric conditions significantly different. Nevertheless, there is much to do in automation and control technologies of this field to achieve the best results in both quantitative and qualitative terms of the products. This is true above all for horticultural crops, sensible to pedoclimatic and microclimatic environment of cultivation. Aim of this work is to characterize the microclimatic parameters in a confined agricultural environment with a perforated duct for the supply of the air conditioning. For this work a microclimatic control unit was used instead of lettuce plants. It was placed into a confined agricultural environment at different locations in the space to acquire the main microclimatic parameters. After setting the inputs of the microclimate environment, the tool measured a series of physical quantities (temperature, radiant temperature, humidity, and air speed). Tests were carried out taking as constant the optimal day temperature to grow lettuce, and by varying supply airflow rate, setting the fan speed at 30 %, 50 %, and 80 %. The results of these tests are essential to perform a real-time control of the microclimatic environment and to manage parameters for the optimization of the entire system. In addition, air speed tests showed an adequate speed decay and a good mixing of air. The values obtained are generally acceptable for indoor cultures and the created conditions are suitable for plants cultivation in this kind of environment.