Thermal Environment Analysis of Selected Polyethene Cladded Single-Span Greenhouse Shapes Models Towards Cooling Needs

Greenhouse energy management is one of the most significant factors of consideration in greenhouse agriculture. Besides implementing energy supply systems to the facility, energy-saving measures must also be taken into consideration. To address the issue of energy demand by greenhouses in a tropical environment, three greenhouse models were developed to simulate their thermal environments utilizing the Transient Systems Simulation Program (TRNSYS 18) as a building energy simulation (BES) platform. The proposed models were used to examine the impact of greenhouse design parameters; roof shape, orientation, covering (polyethene), and ventilation, on their temperature, relative humidity (RH), vapour pressure deficit (VPD), and cooling load. It was found that the most suitable roof design and orientation was the split-gable roof design with the ventilation switched on and 0o (E-W) orientation that had the lowest mean temperature of 24.12 oC and the least cooling demand of 454.59W. While the tunnel greenhouse had the highest cooling load of 21.30 kW. The split-gable greenhouse had. Also, the RH and VPD in the split-gable greenhouse with ventilation were within the acceptable ranges of 50-75% and 0.8 and 1.1 kPa, respectively, for successful greenhouse crop production. The developed models can aid greenhouse farmers in knowing the cost-benefit of a greenhouse before venturing into greenhouse agriculture in the tropical regions.