Balancing energy harvesting and crop production in a nanofluid spectral splitting covering for an active solar greenhouse

Yu Yuan, Yaning Ji, Wei Wang, Dawei Shi, Long Hai, Qianlei Ma, Qichang Yang, Yuming Xie, Bin Li, Gang Wu and Lingling Ma

Energy, 2023, vol. 278, issue C

Abstract: This work represents a nanofluid spectral splitting (NSS) covering applied to the greenhouse roof to achieve the co-production of crops and energy harvesting. NSS is a hollow structure composed of highly light-transmissive rigid materials with 10 mm thick 0.005 vol% ATO-WO3 nanofluids circulating in the hollow layer with a flow rate of 400 L/h. To study the growth response of plants in the NSS greenhouse (NSS-G), plant cultivation experiments and photothermal tests were carried out. The energy analysis and performance estimation of NSS-G were proved. The results show that NSS-G can absorb 77.9% of the solar energy within 800–1500 nm wavelengths to generate heat. Compared with the conventional hollow covering greenhouse (Air-G), NSS-G can reduce the temperature of indoor air and plant leaves by 6.3 °C and 8.7 °C, respectively. Meanwhile, 76.6% of sunlight within 300–800 nm wavelengths is transmitted to plants for photosynthesis. The results of plant growth experiments showed that, in comparison with Air-G, the photosynthetic rate in NSS-G reduced by 6.5%, but plant dry weight was increased by 4.3% and there was no significant difference in biochemical component contents. It proved that it is feasible to use NSS as the covering of the greenhouse roofs, and the total solar energy utilization efficiency in NSS-G was more than 55%.

Keywords: Solar energy; Plant; Greenhouse; Spectral splitting; Nanofluid (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544223011003
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:278:y:2023:i:c:s0360544223011003

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2023.127706

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().