Farms Characterize Airflow
Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) is the production of plants inside a controlled environment. It is technology-based and allows fresh fruits and vegetables to be produced locally, with year-round availability. By growing indoors, farmers have more control over the key environmental factors that affect plant growth such as airflow, temperature, humidity, and lighting. Airflow helps manage temperatures, control humidity, and strengthen plants in controlled growing environments. Air movement delivers the fresh air crops need and circulates carbon dioxide.
Researchers, CEA companies, and engineers use airflow sensing and instrumentation solutions from Degree Controls to optimize their growing systems and facilities. Multipoint instrumentation monitors airflow as growers implement and refine automation techniques. Airflow measurement systems also validate CFD models for controlled environment concepts and facility designs. Researching airflow and engineering aspects of indoor farms is part of a USDA grant to study the best practices and economics of indoor growing.
Airflow instrumentation solutions include:
- laboratory-grade single or multipoint air velocity, temperature, and humidity sensors with USB output,
- linear and grid sensing arrays for planar airflow analysis,
- °C Port multi-channel data acquisition instruments, and
- Windows®-based AccuTrac™ datalogging software.
Our USB sensors, °C Port data acquisition instruments, and AccuTrac™ software are designed to work together as a unified system. AccuTrac™ collects as many as 180 air velocity, temperature, humidity measurements, as well as altitude or barometric pressure data, simultaneously. Data is displayed on-screen and in real-time. With AccuTrac’s easy-to-use graphing tools, users can analyze velocity and temperature via linear or gradient-style mapping. Data is saved in convenient .xlxs, .csv, and .png file formats.
Our multipoint airflow measurement solutions will help you develop and optimize heating, ventilation, cooling and air circulation systems for Controlled Environment Agriculture spaces. Contact Degree Controls to review how our multipoint airflow measurement instrumentation can help with your test and design projects.