Influence of Micro-Environmental Design with Partial Air Conditioning on Mass and Heat Transfer in Greenhouses

Extreme weather has becomes a thorny issue across the world. In agriculture, greenhouse is not only providing suitable living environment in bitter winter but also in hot summer for various kinds of crops. In the subtropical zone, using air conditioning is one of effective cooling methods, but also brings high power consumption and cost. Actually growing conditions for crops are influenced by micro climate hydrodynamic phenomena with small-scale convection. The heat-transfer of traditional air conditioning is convection through bulk cold air flow and diffusing into local growth zone. Thus, it was found drawbacks with low efficiency and high energy-consumption problems. In this presentation, the partial air conditioning with micro-environment design was proposed, and the micro climate phenomena of small-scale heat and mass transfer were also discussed. The concept of micro-environment design is to confine the cold air flow from air conditioning system and covering plant growth zone to generate an optimal environment with high uniformity and less energy-consumption. The micro-environment, design with partial air conditioning induces the small-scale flow fluctuation and contributes to rapid transfer of heat and mass in small-scales, and enhance energy efficiency. The partial air conditioning design concept could be applied with multitudinous crops, and strawberry is chosen in this study.