EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Energy Efficiency in Greenhouse Evaporative Cooling Techniques: Cooling Boxes versus Cellulose Pads

Antonio Franco, Diego L. Valera and Araceli Peña
Additional contact information
Antonio Franco: ETSIA, University of Sevilla, Ctra. Utrera km 1, 41013 Sevilla, Spain
Diego L. Valera: Centro de Investigación en Biotecnología Agroalimentaria—BITAL, University of Almería, Ctra. Sacramento s/n, 04120 Almería, Spain
Araceli Peña: Centro de Investigación en Biotecnología Agroalimentaria—BITAL, University of Almería, Ctra. Sacramento s/n, 04120 Almería, Spain

Energies, 2014, vol. 7, issue 3, 1-21

Abstract: Evaporative cooling systems using a combination of evaporative pads and extractor fans require greenhouses to be hermetic. The greatest concentration of greenhouses in the world is located in southeast Spain, but these tend not to be hermetic structures and consequently can only rely on fogging systems as evaporative cooling techniques. Evaporative cooling boxes provide an alternative to such systems. Using a low-speed wind tunnel, the present work has compared the performance of this system with four pads of differing geometry and thickness manufactured by two different companies. The results obtained show that the plastic packing in the cooling unit produces a pressure drop of 11.05 Pa at 2 m·s −1 , which is between 51.27% and 94.87% lower than that produced by the cellulose pads. This pressure drop was not influenced by increases in the water flow. The evaporative cooling boxes presented greater saturation efficiency at the same flow, namely 82.63%, as opposed to an average figure of 65% for the cellulose pads; and also had a lower specific consumption of water, at around 3.05 L·h −1 ·m −2 ·°C −1 . Consequently, we conclude that evaporative cooling boxes are a good option for cooling non-hermetic greenhouses such as those most frequently used in the Mediterranean basin.

Keywords: greenhouse; evaporative cooling; pressure drop; heat and mass transfer coefficients; specific water consumption; saturation efficiency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/7/3/1427/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/7/3/1427/ (text/html)

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:gam:jeners:v:7:y:2014:i:3:p:1427-1447:d:33836

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager (indexing@mdpi.com).

 
Page updated 2024-12-28
Handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:7:y:2014:i:3:p:1427-1447:d:33836