Thermal computational analysis of microclimates for optimal crop production in controlled atmosphere

This study aims to perform a thermal computational analysis of the indoor environment with a view to identifying a promising method to improve the level of harvest in a regulated indoor space or modified version of controlled environment agriculture (CEA) space. A modified closed cultivated greenhouse model is considered based on a customary model. The operational environment of the refined CEA space model is simulated in computational fluid dynamics environment. In the study, CEA space is assumed to be heated by a constant heat source from the same path for a limited time. The CEA space has two air inlets on one side and two outlets on the other side. A standard k-epsilon model was implemented in the simulation model to define the turbulent transport phenomena. On the virtual environment, the crop is defined using a porous medium approach that was proposed by Darcy-Forchheimer Law. The results are recorded in the form of temperature, velocity and pressure distribution. © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.