International Symposium on High Technology for Greenhouse Systems GreenSys 2009

Université Laval - Québec City – Canada

14-19 June 2009

Study of a passive solar heating greenhouse crop grow gutter

Katsoulas, N., Kittas C.
University of Thessaly, Dept. of
Agriculture Crop Prod. & Rural Env.,
Fytokou Str., 38446 New Ionia, Volos,
Greece, nkatsoul@uth.gr, ckittas@uth.gr
Feidaros, D., Batrzanas, T., Baxevanou K.
Centre for Res. & Techn. Thessaly, Inst. of
Technology & Management of Agr.
Ecosystems, Technology Park of Thessaly,
1st Ind Area, 38500, Volos, Greece

Keywords: energy saving, hydroponic crops, CFD modelling, perforated tube, water-
filled tube

Abstract
Water-filled transparent polyethylene tubes have been used as a passive solar
system in greenhouses in Greece. In this work, the performance of a passive solar
heating system used to serve as a crop grow gutter is studied. The experiments were
performed during autumn and winter of 2007 in two greenhouses, located at the
University of Thessaly near Volos, Greece, cultivated with a tomato crop. One
greenhouse was used for control and plants were grown in rockwool slabs located in
a commercial grow gutter, while in the second greenhouse the rockwool slabs were
located over the new grow gutter. The gutter consisted of a water-filled polyethylene
tube with a diameter of 0.45 m combined with two perforated tubes (diameter of 0.2
m) on the top, in a distance of 0.25 m between them, to serve as gutter-channel for
drained nutrient solution collection. The perforated tubes had holes of about 0.01 m
every 0.50 m and greenhouse air was pumped to inflate the tubes and mix the
greenhouse air. Several parameters inside and outside the greenhouse were recorder
in order to set up and evaluate a numerical model working as basis for further
parametric studies. The experimental results showed that the new passive solar
heating grow gutter resulted in about 7% to 15% heating energy saving. The
perforated tubes’ air escaped with temperature of 1oC to 2oC higher than the
average greenhouse air temperature, increasing locally the air temperature at
plants’ level, indicating heat dissipation from the water-filled tubes. The
configuration of the water-filled PE tube, combined with perforated tube is
simulated using the Fluent CFD code, incorporating external User Defined Function
source code for the non-trivial boundary conditions. The experimental
measurements obtained are used for model validation; while a small parametric
study is performed altering the operational conditions of the proposed system in
order conclusions to be drawn and possible optimizations to be recommended.

INTRODUCTION
Fundamental investigations of effective methods of thermal energy storage have
been significantly intensified since the 1973–1974 energy crisis, leading to the
development of passive solar heating systems which can satisfy 30-60% of the annual
heating requirements and achieve temperatures 3-10°C higher than the minimum outdoor
temperature (Santamouris et al., 1994). Water-filled transparent polyethylene (PE) tubes
have been used as passive solar healing systems in greenhouses (Zabeltitz, 1988; Esquira
et al., 1989; Grafiadellis, 1990). However, this kind of passive solar systems has not been
introduced into the high technology today’s greenhouses and is still on improvement
 International Symposium on High Technology for Greenhouse Systems GreenSys 2009
Université Laval - Québec City – Canada
14-19 June 2009

(Kenisarin and Mahkamov 2006). In addition, these systems had been designed for soil
grown crops, which nowadays are replaced by hydroponically grown crops. Accordingly,
a new design of the system will have to take into account the soilless cultivation
techniques.
Except greenhouse energy saving, one other important point that also needs special
attention is the need for reduction of fungicides and pesticides use in greenhouses. A tool
to reduce these inputs in the greenhouse environment is the optimal greenhouse climate
control and the perfect mixture of greenhouse air. On this purpose, air mixing fans and
perforated tubes are mainly used. Accordingly, a combination a passive solar system with
a perforated tube would save energy and create a more homogeneous greenhouse climate
that could lead to a reduction of fungicides use in the greenhouse. Furthermore, the
development of as robust and stable passive solar system to serve also as a gutter for
hydroponic crops would lead to a reduction of hydroponic systems investment cost.
To the authors’ best knowledge, no information is available on the effect of the
combination of the above systems on the greenhouse microclimate and on crop response.
Accordingly, the aim of this study was to experimentally test the performance of water-
filled transparent polyethylene tubes, used for passive solar heating, to serve for both
passive solar heating and crop grow gutter in hydroponic crops.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

The experiment has been performed in two similar arched roof polyethylene
covered greenhouses, N-S oriented, located at the University of Thessaly near Volos,
(Velestino: Latitude 39º 22΄, longitude 22º 44΄, altitude 85 m) on the continental area of
eastern Greece, during autumn and winter periods of 2007. The geometrical
characteristics of the greenhouses were as follows: eaves height of 2.4 m; ridge height of
4.1 m; total width of 8 m; total length of 20 m; ground area of 160 m2, and volume of 524
m3. The greenhouses were equipped with two side roll-up windows. Heating was
achieved by means of PVC pipes, located above ground, near plants’ substrates. Heating
was controlled by an on-off controller that started heating at 15ºC during the night or
19ºC during the day and interrupted it at 16ºC during the night or at 20ºC during the day.
The soil of each greenhouse was totally covered by double-side (white above, black
below) plastic mulch. The tomato crop (Licopersicon esculentum, cv. Belladonna) was
transplanted during October 2007, in rockwool slabs (1 m long, 0.2 m wide). Plant
density was 2.4 plants·m-2. Plants were laid out 0.33 m apart in four double rows, with an
intra-row distance of 0.75 m and an inter-row distance of 0.8 m.

The grow gutter

One of the two greenhouses was used as a control greenhouse; and plants were
grown in rockwool slabs located in a commercial grow gutter 40 cm above ground, while
in the second greenhouse the rockwool slabs were located over the new grow gutter. The
gutter consisted of a water-filled polyethylene (PE) tube with a diameter of 0.45 m
combined with two perforated tubes (diameter of 0.2 m) glued on the top of the water
filled tube, in a distance of 0.25 m between them, to serve as gutter-channel for drained
nutrient solution collection. The perforated tubes had holes of about 0.01m every 0.50 m
and air coming from the greenhouse environment was pumped to inflate the tubes and
mix the greenhouse air (Fig. 1), near the level of the crop. The perforated tube could also
serve for hot air, cold air or CO2 supply in the greenhouse. The PE water tube gutters
were laid out in four double rows to appropriately fit the necessary planting scheme.
 International Symposium on High Technology for Greenhouse Systems GreenSys 2009
Université Laval - Québec City – Canada
14-19 June 2009

The total water stored in the PE water tubes located inside the greenhouse was
21.7 m3. Accordingly, the energy storage capacity of the system was about 91 MJ per ºC
of water temperature change.

Measurements
The following climatic data were recorded: air temperature (Ti in °C) and vapour
pressure deficit (Di in kPa), by means of temperature and humidity sensors placed 1.5 m
aboveground and in the centre of each greenhouse and outside the greenhouses, PE water
tubes’ surface temperature (Twt in °C), by means of copper-constantan thermocouples
glued to the external surface of the PE tubes, in three positions along the perforated tube
length (2.0 m, 8.0 m and 15 m along the 17 m length tube), perforated tube air
temperature (Ta-pt in °C) by means of copper-constantan thermocouples inserted to the
tube in three positions along the PE water tube length (2.0 m, 8.0 m and 15 m along the
17 m length tube); and global solar radiation, by means of a pyranometer located inside
and outside the greenhouses. Furthermore, the energy supplied in each greenhouse
through the heating system was also recorded by means of calorimeter systems. Finally,
the crop transpiration was measured by means of lysimeters in both greenhouses. All the
above-mentioned measurements were collected by a data logger system. Measurements
took place every 30 seconds and 10-minute average values were recorded.

The simulations
The flow inside the greenhouse is assumed to be 3D, steady-state, incompressible
and turbulent (Ferziger and Peric, 1996). The flow and transport phenomena are described
by the Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations. The natural convection
effects due the temperature difference between the ground and the roof of the greenhouse
and the plants’ resistance are incorporated as source terms in the momentum equations.
The energy conservation is modelled by the energy transport equation taking under
consideration the plants existence, modifying the thermal conductivity coefficient, and by
the radiation diffusion equation. The radiation is simulated by the Discrete Ordinates
(DO) model using the materialization of Chui and Raithby (1993) and its contribution is
adjusted properly as source term in the energy transport equation.
The natural convection effects are simulated by the Boussinesq aproxiamtion
(Batchelor, 1967). The porous media are modelled by the addition of a momentum source
term Si to the fluid flow equation. The specific source contribution is composed by a
viscous loss term known as Darcy law and an inertial loss term. The energy distribution
inside the greenhouse is computed by a RANS type equation. The effect of turbulence on
the flow is implemented via the high Re k-ε model (standard) model (Launder and
Spalding 1972).
1. Numerical model. The commercial CFD code FLUENT was used for the simulations
needs, and a structured body fitted mesh was produced in order to simulate a portion of
greenhouse with the solar passive configuration. RANS equations were resolved
numerically by finite volume method, using a grid consisted of 630K hexahedral cells and
1.9M faces. The SIMPLEC (Versteeg and Malalasekera, 1995) algorithm was used for
pressure-velocity coupling, yielding an elliptic differential Poisson equation in order to
treat the mass conservation equation. A second order discretization scheme (SOU) was
used for the convective terms of Reynolds averaged transport equations (Tamamidis and
Assanis, 1993) and a central difference scheme for the diffusive terms. The absolute
convergence criterion was set to 10-6 for all resolved equations.
 International Symposium on High Technology for Greenhouse Systems GreenSys 2009
Université Laval - Québec City – Canada
14-19 June 2009

2. Boundary conditions. The computational domain was restricted in an internal slab of

the real geometry. Specifically, it is considered as a slab with 1 m width and 1m length in
the middle of the greenhouse covering the total volume above the specific area till
greenhouse roof. A side of the slab cuts the porous zone of the cultivation in middle
section as well as the rockwool slab and the cover interface of the water storage. This
interface acts as isothermal boundary to the rest domain as well as the ground wall. All
the walls normal to the ground stand for symmetry boundary conditions which lead to
zero gradient condition for all resolved variables. The duration of typical steady state
execution takes about 30-36 CPU hours in a quad core CPU (Pentium IV Quad Core
QX9850 Extreme Edition) to achieve a converged solution. It should be noted that the
elongated duration is ought to the detailed mesh which is used (630 K cells), the number
of the resolved equations corresponding to a 3-Dimensional fully turbulent simulation
plus the very demanding radiation model in CPU intensity and memory, which is
contributing to energy equation as source term. For the above reasons, the numerical
model was initially used for the simulation of 4 cases corresponding to 4 hours of a
cloudy winter day (12/12/2007). The boundary conditions of the numerical code were set
according to the experimental data of the greenhouse climate and passive solar gutter
system measured in the greenhouse (Table 1).

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The mean values of air temperature measured in the two greenhouses were similar
during the periods that the heating system was used. This was expected because during
those periods the air temperature inside the greenhouse was controlled by the greenhouse
heating system. However, the analysis of the energy consumption data of the heating
system, measured during the period from October to December 2007, showed that the
heating energy consumed daily in the greenhouse with the passive solar gutter was about
7% to 15% lower than that needed in the control greenhouse, depending on the weather
conditions (sunny or cloudy day) of the previews day.
The evolution of air temperature measured in the three positions (2.0 m, 8.0 m and
15 m along the 17 m perforated tube) of the perforated tube and in the centre of the
greenhouse at a height of 2.0 m; and of the mean PE water tube temperature, is shown in
figure 3 [a sunny day (07/12/2007) is selected to be presented in order to clearly show the
effect of passive solar system on greenhouse microclimate]. Two different phases of heat
storage and heat dissipation can be considered: the first one during the day time and the
second one during the night time. During the day and during periods that the greenhouse
air temperature was higher than the PE water tube temperature, the air entering the
perforated tube was cooled down along its pass from the tube, and exited the perforated
tube with a temperature lower than the greenhouse air temperature. Accordingly, during
this phase, energy is stored in the PE water tube and the greenhouse air is cooled. During
the periods that greenhouse air temperature was lower than the PE water tube
temperature, the air escaping the perforated tube with a temperature of about 1oC (middle
of the tube) to 2ºC (end of the tube) higher than the average greenhouse air temperature,
increasing locally the air temperature at plants’ level, indicating heat dissipation from the
water-filled tubes. During this period, the increase of temperature near the plants level
leads to a reduction of air relative humidity and accordingly to non favourable conditions
for fungi development. Depending on the temperature difference between the greenhouse
air and the PE water tube, the temperature difference of the air along a unit length of the
perforated tube, as simulated by the CFD code, was between 0.1ºC to 0.3ºC. Negative
 International Symposium on High Technology for Greenhouse Systems GreenSys 2009
Université Laval - Québec City – Canada
14-19 June 2009

values of the difference indicated energy storage while positive values indicated heat
dissipation from the PE water tube to the air.
The results of the simulations of the greenhouse air temperature, using the CFD
code, along with the measured values of greenhouse air temperature, during the same time
period, are shown in table 2. A very good agreement between the measured and simulated
values of greenhouse air temperature can be observed, indicating the good tuning and
high precision of the numerical code used. Furthermore, the air temperature and velocity
profiles, as simulated by the CFD code, are shown in figures 5 and 6, respectively. The
values shown in figures 5 and 6 have not been validated, but this will be done during the
next steps of this work.
The crop transpiration measurements carried out in the two greenhouses showed
that the transpiration rate of the crop was similar in both cases, indicating that the air
velocity increase at the plants level did not affect crop transpiration (data not shown).

CONCLUDING REMARKS
In this work, water-filled transparent polyethylene tubes were tested for
greenhouse passive solar heating and were combined with perforated air tubes so that the
whole system could serve as a crop grow gutter. The analysis of heating needs
measurements showed that the passive solar system reduced greenhouse heating needs by
about 7% to 15%. It was found that the system could be used for greenhouse heating
during the night and greenhouse cooling during the day. The system was simulated using
a commercial CFD code appropriately modified for the necessary simulations. The results
of the simulations were very promising since a good agreement between measured and
simulated values was found. After complete validation, the CFD code will be further used
for the optimisation of the system.

Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge the General Secretary for Research and
Development of Greece and the I. Mpatsis - Geothermiki S.A. for financing this project in
the frame of PAVET 2003 projects.

Literature Cited
Batchelor, G. K., 1967. An introduction to fluid dynamics. Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge
Esquira, I, Segal I., Antler A., 1989. Water sleeves for passive solar heating of
greenhouses. ‘In C. von. Zabeltitz (ed.). Passive solar heating of greenhouses with
water filled water polyethylene tubes. FAO-Regional Office for Europe, 39-44
Ferziger, J.H., Peric M., 1996. Computational methods for fluid dynamics. Springer,
London.
Grafiadellis, M., 1990. The use of solar energy for heating greenhouse. Acta Hort. 263:
83-96.
Kenisarin, M., Mahkamov, K., 2006. Solar energy storage using phase change materials.
Ren. & Sust. En. Rev., 11(9): 1913-1965
Launder, B.E., Spalding, D.B., 1972, Lectures in mathematical models of turbulence.
Academic Press, London, England.
Raithby, G.D., Chui, E.H., 1990. A finite-volume method for predicting a radiant heat
transfer in enclosures with participating media. Tr. ASME J. Heat Tr., 112: 415-423.
 International Symposium on High Technology for Greenhouse Systems GreenSys 2009
Université Laval - Québec City – Canada
14-19 June 2009

Santamouris, M., Balaras, C. A., Daskalaki, E., Vallindras M., 1994. Passive solar
agricultural greenhouses: A worldwide classification and evaluation of technologies
and systems used for heating purposes. Solar En., 53(5): 411-426.
Tamamidis, P., Assanis D.N., 1993. Evaluation of various high order accuracy schemes
with and without flux limiters, Intl. J. Num. Meth. Fluids, 16: 931-948.
Versteeg, H.K., Malalasekera, W., 1995. An introduction to computational fluid
dynamics, Longman, London.
Von Zabeltitz, C., 1988. Solar energy: Alternative energy sources for greenhouse heating.
In: Von Zabeltitz, C., (ed), Energy conservation and renewable energies for
greenhouse heating, FAO, 122-128.

Tables
Table 1. Boundary conditions used in the CFD model for the simulations performed.
Outside Solar Cover Temperature PE water tube
Case Radiation temperature
(W m-2) (ºC) (ºC)
1 (Time 12:00) 97.4 12.9 18.3
2 (Time 13:00) 91.6 12.6 17.9
3 (Time 14:00) 133.7 14.9 19.7
4 (Time 15:00) 64.9 17.8 22.6

Table 2. Measured and simulated values of the greenhouse air temperature during four
hours of a selected day of the experimental period.
Air temperature (oC)
Time (hr) Measurements Simulations
12:00 17.00 16.98
13:00 16.60 16.62
14:00 18.30 18.14
15:00 21.00 20.26
 International Symposium on High Technology for Greenhouse Systems GreenSys 2009
Université Laval - Québec City – Canada
14-19 June 2009

Figures

Perforated tube Rockwool

slab

PE water tube Perforated

tube
PE water filed tube

Figure 1. Photo of the greenhouse with the Figure 2. Schematic representation of the
passive solar heating and greenhouse crop passive solar heating and greenhouse crop
grow gutter system installed. Tomato plants grow gutter system with the tomato crop,
are grown in rockwool slabs located above the as designed for the simulation purposes.
PE water filled tubes, between two perforated
tubes.
28 300 2.00
Ta
26 Ta-pt-1 Time 12:00
1.75
Ta-pt-2 250 Time 13:00
24 Ta-pt-3 1.50 Time 14:00
Height above ground (m)

Twt
Time 14:00
Solar radiation (W m )

22 200
-2

SR 1.25
Temperature ( C)
o

20
150 1.00
18
0.75
16 100
0.50
14
50 0.25
12
0.00
10 0
20:00 23:00 2:00 5:00 8:00 11:00 14:00 17:00 20:00 23:00 2:00 5:00 16.0 17.0 18.0 19.0 20.0 21.0 22.0 23.0
o
Time
Temperature ( C)

Figure 3. Evolution of perforated tube air Figure 4. Vertical profile of greenhouse air
temperature, of the greenhouse and of the PE temperature as simulated by the CFD code
water tube temperature. Upward and during a period with greenhouse air
downward arrows indicate greenhouse vents temperature lower than PE water tube
opening and closing, respectively. Ta= temperature. The air at the lower level is
greenhouse air, Ta-pt-1,2,3 = perforated tube exiting perforated tube and then mixed
air at 2 m, 8 m and 15 m along the length of with the greenhouse air.
the tube respectively, Twt= PE water tube,
SR= solar radiation.
 International Symposium on High Technology for Greenhouse Systems GreenSys 2009
Université Laval - Québec City – Canada
14-19 June 2009

Figure 5. Air temperature (degrees K) Figure 6. Air velocity (m s-1) contours in

contours in the middle of the greenhouse the middle of the greenhouse along the
along the length of 1 m of the passive solar length of 1 m of the passive solar heating
and grow gutter system. and grow gutter system.