Abstract
A plant factory generally refers to a plant cultivation facility having a cultivation environment control system. It is capable of producing plants all year around owing to optimized control of lighting, air temperature, humidity, and airflow. Adjustments to CO2 concentration and lighting enable shorter cultivation periods. Plant factories are required to reduce cost of air-conditioning. Also, optimal air-conditioning system for plant factories are required to increase harvests of plants. The purpose of this study is to develop an optimal air-conditioning system for plant factories. In that regard, an air-conditioning simulation method with cultivated plants is proposed. A unique feature of this method is that it takes the living activities of plants into account. This method takes into account effect of transpiration on air temperature, humidity and effect of photosynthesis on CO2 concentration. By analyzing photosynthesis, the fresh weight of plants can be estimated. This paper describes about the simulation method, and describes the growing tests of plant characteristic values which are taken into the simulation. Simulation accuracy is also evaluated by comparing it with experimental results.
