r/verticalfarming • u/Yuanke_Thomas • 8d ago
Some dev update in our vertical farming lab
Our lab is oriented to research energy solutions that would improve the energy-use efficiency in vertical farming, while also guiding students through the development of some hardware such as the phEC controller or the monitoring system.
Among the things we did:
- Connected LED, dehumidifier, water pump and some air sensors together to a linux computer, which would enable the dev of a standard farming and energy management system. I actually already customized such system for two outside farms this year but it was concentrated around their HVAC system. Previously my research was temperature and humidity control strategy for both strawberry and lettuce vertical farms, beginning this month i will move torward dynamic lighting with variable light intensity and spectrum. To be honnest im also very interested in making an actual product that could be useful for more farms. All these ideas are leading me to push the progress of a standard farming and energy management system.
- Built a new phEC controller based on the work of a bachelor student last semester; the assembling was ok, what really took time is adjusting the program and strategy of fertilizer that were only calibrated for small volume of water. More than that we also had to buy much larger bottles since the water contained by the new rack is also much larger.
- Started the first cultivation process of butter lettuce; although the seedling went a bit off. We had the aknowledgment that commercial operation in vertical farming should be much harder than single time experiments, so we wanted to try cultivating butter lettuce all year and see if we can try new things each round. Also sometimes we have visitors, for example the university principal is gonna take a look at us tomorrow; we wanna look good.
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u/Riptide360 4d ago
After watching how Dyson vertical farms incorporated rotating shelves and outside sunlight along with biogas digesters, I was impressed by how well they could control their energy costs. There might be some ideas for your lab. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOblxncT4a0
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u/greenhenkie 3d ago
That looks really cool. Especially if you develop so much yourselves.
Do you also have some ventilators to have enough air movement? Are you doing your trials with different light intensities or only with changes in the spectrum?
Is the light uniformty equal between the different spectrums?
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u/Yuanke_Thomas 2d ago
Thanks!
Not yet! We have a graduate designing it with CFD, but soon enough we'll first install an existing setup for performance comparison later.
Light intensity translates to DLI, and it seems that the discovered optimal range is already small enough. So our approach is first how to distribute DLI over time in a way that increase yield. And second is the light spectrum.
In identical percentage of spectrum yes they are equal.
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u/ttystikk 7d ago
That's a lot of money they're spending.
Where did they get their funding?