A CFD Analysis of Heat and Mass Transfer in greenhouses: An Introduction

摘要

Greenhouses are mainly used with a purpose of improving the environmental conditions in which plants are grown. The parameters that affect the growth of plants inside greenhouse, such as air temperature and relative humidity are controlled appropriately. They are done so efficiently to retain relatively low levels of solar energy; but without specialized ventilating and cooling systems, they will quickly fry a crop during high temperature periods. Over the past few decades CFD has been a useful tool in development of numerical models that improve the understanding of the interaction of the gases and vapors constituting micro-climate inside greenhouses. It is however, necessary to perform a CFD analysis to show us the trends, strengths and weaknesses in the use of this tool. This paper discusses an introduction of CFD analysis of airflow and climate inside greenhouses, analyzing the issues that help us understand how it has evolved, as well as trends and limitations on their use.