Abstract
The sustainable agriculture cultivation in greenhouses is constantly evolving thanks to new technologies and methodologies able to improve the crop yield and to solve the common concerns which occur in protected environments. In this paper, an MPC-based control system has been realized in order to control the indoor air temperature in a high efficiency greenhouse. The main objective is to determine the optimal control signals related to the water mass flow rate supplied by a heat pump. The MPC model allows a predefined temperature profile to be tracked with an energy saving approach. The MPC has been implemented as a multiobjective optimization model that takes into account the dynamic behavior of the greenhouse in terms of energy and mass balances. The energy supply is provided by a ground coupled heat pump (GCHP) and by the solar radiation while the energy losses related to heat transfers across the glazed envelope. The proposed MPC method was applied in a smart innovative greenhouse located in Italy, and its performances were compared with a traditional reactive control method in terms of deviation of the indoor temperature in respect to the desired one and in terms of electric power consumption. The results demonstrated that, for a time horizon of 20 h, in a greenhouse with dimensions 15.3 and 9.9 m and an average height of 4.5 m, the proposed MPC approach saved about 30% in electric power compared with a relay control, guaranteeing a consistent and reliable temperature profile in respect to the predefined tracked one.
Highlights
Due to the significant climate changes occurred in the last decades, the introduction of new methodologies and technologies has become essential to support agriculture and to optimize greenhouse productions.In the last decades, vegetables and fruit cultivation has become more and more competitive—above all, in the Mediterranean area
This paper presents the development of an Model Predictive Control (MPC)-based control system to optimize the indoor air temperature of a smart greenhouse according to the requirements of the specific crop cultivation
In this work, using a MPC methodology whose cost function minimizes three different objectives, a model was implemented to optimize the energy saving in a greenhouse
Summary
Due to the significant climate changes occurred in the last decades, the introduction of new methodologies and technologies has become essential to support agriculture and to optimize greenhouse productions.In the last decades, vegetables and fruit cultivation has become more and more competitive—above all, in the Mediterranean area. Due to the significant climate changes occurred in the last decades, the introduction of new methodologies and technologies has become essential to support agriculture and to optimize greenhouse productions. The main goals of this ongoing revolution concern the introduction of the automation and digital technologies in the agriculture sector favoring a transition toward smart and sustainable farming systems. In this context, Agriculture 4.0 represents a great opportunity to take into account the variability and uncertainties involving the agri-food production chain, especially due to the costumers’ inconstancy or in fighting emergency situations such as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic [4]. The main innovative technologies able to support this transition include the Internet of Things (IoT) [5], Artificial Intelligence (AI) [6], remote sensing and new applications in intelligent control and the automation of production processes [7]
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