Energy Flow Simulation of the Uneven Span Glass Greenhouse with Special Structure using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)

Greenhouse cultivation is the popular intensive kind of crop production with a yield per cultivated unit area more than 10 times higher compared to field crops. Greenhouse production requires the use of large amounts of energy, water, and pesticides and it usually generates huge quantities of wastes to be disposed of it. Investment, labor, and energy costs per unit area are much higher in the greenhouse industry than in any other agricultural sectors. Sustainable greenhouse systems, socially supportive, commercially competitive, and environmentally sound, depend on cultivation techniques, equipment management, and constructive materials that aim to reduce agrochemicals, energy and water consumption as well as waste generation. The management of the greenhouse environment is depending on temperature manipulation. Temperature manipulation is critical to influencing plant growth, quality, and morphology and so is a major strategy in the environmental modification of crops. Heterogeneous indoor microclimate of a greenhouse has long become a matter of concern in many studies. It is believed to be unfavorable for crop growth, which damages crop activity, particularly transpiration and photosynthesis, one of the major causes of non-uniform production and quality. Since early and conventional methods are not sufficient to evaluate microclimate variables inside a greenhouse, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) approach was applied for better and more accurate results. CFD is an effective numerical analysis technique to predict the distribution of the climatic variables inside cultivation facilities. Numerous studies have focused on the internal temperature, humidity, solar radiation, and airflow inside multiple cultivation facilities. For example, the CFD method was used to simulate natural ventilation for agricultural buildings and improve crop production systems. The CFD simulation and evaluation models could be applied for evaluation of the inside situation and temperature in greenhouses. Thermal and water vapor transfer is influenced by the openings of greenhouses in the CFD simulation. The CFD model was developed to predict the distribution of temperature, water vapor, and CO2 occurring in a Venlo-type semi-closed glass greenhouse equipped with air conditioners. Based on the above literature, this research aims to evaluate the energy flow and modeling of an un-even semi-buried greenhouse using external and internal variables and numerical solutions by the CFD method.

In this study, Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) solution was applied to evaluate the inside environment of a semi-double glass greenhouse with an east-west location. This greenhouse has a special structure that is used in very hot or very cold areas due to its depth of more than one meter below the ground. The greenhouse has an area of 38m2 and an air volume of 78.8m3. The temperature and humidity data were collected from inside and outside the greenhouse by temperature sensors (SHT 11 model made by CMOS USA). Irradiation data were collected inside the greenhouse, on level ground, by the TES132 radiometer.

In this study, the CFD method was used for a model solution with ANSYS Fluent version 2020R2 software. To evaluate the predictive capability of the model and its optimization, the comparison between actual (ya) and predicted values (yp) was used. Three criteria of RMSE, MAPE, and R2 were also used to evaluate the accuracy of the final model. The results showed that the dynamic model can accurately estimate the temperature of the air inside the greenhouse at a height of 1 m (R2 = 0.987, MAPE = 2.17%) and 2 m (R2 = 0.987, MAPE = 2.28%) from the floor. The results of energy flow showed that this greenhouse transfers 6779.4.4 kJ of accumulated thermal energy to the ground during the experiment.

In the present study, the computational fluid dynamics method was used to simulate the internal conditions of an un-even semi-buried greenhouse with external and internal variables including temperature and solar radiation. The results showed that this greenhouse structure is able to transfer part of the increase in temperature caused by sunlight to the soil depth (104.214 kJm-2 heat through the floor, 178.443 kJm-2 through the north wall and 113.757 kJm-2 through the south wall). By increasing the thermal conductivity of the inner surface of the greenhouse, the heat flux to the depth of the soil can be increased.