Optimization of solar based vertical farming with ray-traced daylighting analysis and visualizations

• Main Author: Foo, Chuan Kun
• Other Authors: Ng Yin Kwee
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2020
• Subjects: Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/141830
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Due to a diminishing land availability and a growing need for food security in Singapore, there is a need to focus on cultivating agriculture technology to enable us to face the challenges ahead. The recent worldwide pandemic caused by COVID-19 has further highlighted the importance of food security as seen from the reaction by the public. This study would make use of raytracing software and heat load models to optimise the growing of crops vertically and by doing so, would serve to increase the plausibility of urban VFs in Singapore. Crop trays are modelled using a CAD software and is then imported into a raytracing software TracePro 2019. Parameters obtained from the heat load and angle calculations would be used to start the simulation. Thereafter, solar irradiance obtained would be compared to different simulations with different design parameters. For this paper, the main design variable would be the tray width and tray inclination angle. After multiple simulations, it was found that trays at the bottom are less affected by varying angles of sunlight while trays at the top receive extreme variations. It was also noted that while the shaded area increases as tray inclination increases, the solar irradiance flux on each trays increases as opposed to decreasing. This new finding led to the conclusion that an increase in the angle of attack of the solar irradiance increased the occurrence of reflected and diffused irradiance. By just tilting the trays by 20 degrees, it allows more light to reach inwards, which would allow for a longer width of the trays. This in turn also increases the total yield of a tray in a limited space. This discovery can be utilised for the layout and arrangement for indoor VFs that relies on external solar irradiance for a light source and is proof that crop yield can be increased without adding extra energy consumption.