Development of a User Friendly Application for the Simulation and Design of Greenhouse Environments

Abstract

This study presents an application to simulate the internal temperature and relative humidity of a greenhouse, which provides a simple way to predict crop environmental requirements. Programming was developed in a worksheet with subroutines based on a steady model of energy and mass transfer and as well as psychometric relationships. It contains a user friendly interface that helps increase the analysis and design capabilities on greenhouse environments in countries with low-tech possibilities. This tool can help professionals involved in the greenhouse industry to better understand the complexity and behavior of a greenhouse environment. It can be used as a support aid to evaluate the crop´s specific sustainability in a greenhouse given climate conditions and it can also help design the mechanical systems in order to improve crop productivity. Additionally, in existing projects, this tool can be used to evaluate mechanical systems and a variety of devices that could provide optimal conditions for a crop improving investment efficiency. Implementing this method demonstrated in several validation studies carried out in Costa Rica, that it is possible to achieve suitable precision in the simulation and design of greenhouse environments using basic computational resources.