Buildings require a very high energy consumption for their climatization, and they are now called to provide comfortable indoor environments minimizing their environmental footprint in cities. Bioclimatic solar greenhouses are interesting infrastructures attached to buildings that can act as passive solar systems, allowing the reduction of energy needs for indoor acclimatization. The current work aims to investigate the thermal effects on summer cooling determined by the biochemical process of plant evapotranspiration performed by a natural 'green' system, placed inside a bioclimatic solar greenhouse. Four horticultural plant species (celery, lettuce, tomato, and grapevine), exhibiting a high evapotranspiration potential, were cultivated inside a bioclimatic solar greenhouse to test their effective evapotranspiration capacity and the hypothesis that the presence of a set of plants could favor summer cooling of building indoor spaces allowing a cost saving for air conditioning. Plant species, resulting very suitable to practice domestic horticulture in the bioclimatic solar greenhouse located in Mediterranean area, were selected according to their specific crop coefficient during the full vegetative development (Kc, int). Evapotranspirated water was measured for each of the four species and for the whole 'green' system. Grapevine resulted the most efficient, reaching a maximum of evapotranspirated water almost equal to 1 kg (per individual plant grown in a 12 L pot), in a hot summer day of year 2020. Moreover, in summer 2021, a LED system was implemented inside the greenhouse, to increase the internal level of shadowing, to allow natural ventilation and, at the same time, to guarantee the radiation necessary for photosynthesis and evapotranspiration processes to plants. Under these conditions, the 'green' system integrated in the bioclimatic solar greenhouse allowed a light reduction of the internal air temperature, making this environment more livable during the hot season, while being positively exploited for domestic agriculture.
Influence of Plant Evapotranspiration Process on the Summer Cooling of a Solar Bioclimatic Greenhouse Internal Environment
Carlo Bibbiani;
2024-01-01
Abstract
Buildings require a very high energy consumption for their climatization, and they are now called to provide comfortable indoor environments minimizing their environmental footprint in cities. Bioclimatic solar greenhouses are interesting infrastructures attached to buildings that can act as passive solar systems, allowing the reduction of energy needs for indoor acclimatization. The current work aims to investigate the thermal effects on summer cooling determined by the biochemical process of plant evapotranspiration performed by a natural 'green' system, placed inside a bioclimatic solar greenhouse. Four horticultural plant species (celery, lettuce, tomato, and grapevine), exhibiting a high evapotranspiration potential, were cultivated inside a bioclimatic solar greenhouse to test their effective evapotranspiration capacity and the hypothesis that the presence of a set of plants could favor summer cooling of building indoor spaces allowing a cost saving for air conditioning. Plant species, resulting very suitable to practice domestic horticulture in the bioclimatic solar greenhouse located in Mediterranean area, were selected according to their specific crop coefficient during the full vegetative development (Kc, int). Evapotranspirated water was measured for each of the four species and for the whole 'green' system. Grapevine resulted the most efficient, reaching a maximum of evapotranspirated water almost equal to 1 kg (per individual plant grown in a 12 L pot), in a hot summer day of year 2020. Moreover, in summer 2021, a LED system was implemented inside the greenhouse, to increase the internal level of shadowing, to allow natural ventilation and, at the same time, to guarantee the radiation necessary for photosynthesis and evapotranspiration processes to plants. Under these conditions, the 'green' system integrated in the bioclimatic solar greenhouse allowed a light reduction of the internal air temperature, making this environment more livable during the hot season, while being positively exploited for domestic agriculture.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
