b i o s y s t e m s e n g i n e e r i n g 1 1 9 ( 2 0 1 4 ) 9 8 e1 0 7

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Research Paper

Air exchange and ventilation efficiencies

of a monospan greenhouse with one inflow and
one outflow through longitudinal side openings

Meir Teitel*, Erez Wenger

Institute of Agricultural Engineering, Agricultural Research Organization, The Volcani Center, P.O.B. 6,
Bet Dagan 50250, Israel

article info
Until about a decade ago, greenhouse microclimates were analysed using a simplified
Article history: approach assuming a perfectly stirred enclosure. Demands for efficient and sustainable
Received 13 April 2013 greenhouse operations, stimulated intensive research that focused into the distributed
Received in revised form microclimate within greenhouses. Since the distributed microclimate and the air-exchange
29 October 2013 rate are interconnected the latter is important. Three methods for determining the air
Accepted 4 November 2013 exchange in a small naturally ventilated monospan greenhouse were compared: experi-
Published online 25 February 2014 ments, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and a model which relates flow rate through
openings to their pressure drops. A rose-growing greenhouse was ventilated via two lon-
gitudinal side openings, one on the windward and the other on the leeward walls. In the
experiments ventilation rates were estimated by means of a tracer gas; in the CFD simu-
lations the decay rate of a virtual tracer gas and calculated airflow rates through the
openings were used and in the model, ventilation rates were calculated with an equation
relating flow rate through the openings to their pressure drop, using local wind-pressure
coefficients. All the methods agreed well up to a wind speed of about 4 m s
1; at higher
wind speeds the ventilation rate values deduced from the decay of tracer gas, both in the
experiments and CFD simulations, were much lower than those obtained with the other
techniques. The concept of age of air was used to show that the lower ventilation rates at
the high wind speeds were associated with imperfect mixing of the supply air with the
greenhouse air, with consequently diminished air-exchange efficiency.
ª 2013 IAgrE. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction buoyancy and wind forces. The primary aims of ventilation are
to remove excessive heat and water vapour from the green-
1.1. General house, and thus keep the crop under a proper microclimate.
Since about 1990 many studies aimed to understand how the
As shown by Bournet and Boulard (2010) and many other au- ventilation of greenhouses and the resultant crop microcli-
thors, one of the key factors controlling greenhouse climate is mate are influenced by buoyancy and wind forces, as well as
ventilation, i.e., the air exchange that occurs in response to other parameters, e.g., greenhouse shape and the

* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: grteitel@agri.gov.il, grteitel@volcani.agri.gov.il (M. Teitel).
1537-5110/$ e see front matter ª 2013 IAgrE. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biosystemseng.2013.11.001
 b i o s y s t e m s e n g i n e e r i n g 1 1 9 ( 2 0 1 4 ) 9 8 e1 0 7 99

uniformly throughout the greenhouse until a certain pre-

Nomenclature determined concentration is reached, when injection is
stopped. Then a short period of about 5e15 min is usually
A opening area, m2
allowed for gas homogenisation and stabilisation. The open-
C tracer gas or contaminant concentration, ppm
ings are then opened and the decay of the tracer-gas con-
or K
centration is recorded. The ventilation rate N, identified as the
hCi average tracer gas or contaminant
number of greenhouse air exchanges per hour can be calcu-
concentration within the space, ppm or K
lated from (Ould Khaoua, Bournet, Migeon, Boulard, &
Cd discharge coefficient of opening
Chassériaux, 2006):
Cds discharge coefficient of screen
Cdsv discharge coefficient of screened opening 1 C0
Cpl wind pressure coefficient on leeward wall N¼ ln (1)
tf
t0 Cf
Cpw wind pressure coefficient on windward wall
in which C0 is the average tracer-gas concentration (in ppm) in
G airflow rate due to wind effect, m3 s
1
the greenhouse volume at time t0 (i.e., the start of concen-
g gravitational acceleration, m s
2
tration decay) and Cf is the average gas concentration at time tf
h height of opening, m
in hours when the concentration has fallen to about 10e20%
h height of neutral pressure level, m
of its initial value. The derivation of Eq. (1) assumes that the
N air-exchange rate, h
1
greenhouse can be treated as a single well-mixed zone.
P pressure, Pa
However, this is very rarely the case and, invariably, the
Q ventilation flow rate, m3 s
1
supply air does not mix perfectly with the greenhouse air,
t time, h or s
which can lead to the former being exhausted before fulfilling
U mean air speed through an opening, m s
1
its role of removing indoor heat and moisture, i.e., short-
V volume of the ventilated space, m3
circuiting the process.
Vw ambient wind speed, m s
1
In the static method, the injection rate of gas into a
3a air-exchange efficiency
greenhouse is held at a constant value until an equilibrium
3v ventilation efficiency
concentration is reached, and the gas supply and sampling
r air density, kg m
3
system must be spatially distributed in the greenhouse to
smin minimum possible time to complete one air
obtain good dispersion of the gas and uniform sampling of the
exchange, s
air. Further detailed descriptions of the application of the
hsi mean age of air of the ventilated space, s
tracer-gas technique for ventilation measurements were
Subscripts given by various authors (Awbi, 2003; Ethridge & Sandberg,
e external conditions 1996; Sherman, 1990).
ex at the exhaust opening Another technique to measure ventilation rate is based on
i internal conditions the pressure differences across the openings of an enclosure.
s at the supply opening In natural ventilation the two driving forces responsible are
0 at the start of concentration decay the pressure difference due to buoyancy, and the wind effect.
f at the end of concentration decay Direct estimates of airflow through the openings by means of
differential pressure measurements were described by
Boulard, Kittas, Papadakis, and Mermier (1998). Pressure dif-
ferences were also used by Brockett and Albright (1987), who
derived an expression to calculate natural ventilation rates for
configuration of openings. A variety of techniques to measure
a building, based on combining pressure differences driven by
the ventilation rate were used in these studies; they were
thermal buoyancy and wind forces. In this technique the
reviewed and their corresponding accuracy for mechanically
equation that provides an estimate of the mean air speed, U
and naturally ventilated spaces in the agricultural sector were
through an opening, driven by the pressure difference, DP
discussed by van Buggenhout et al. (2009) and Kwon et al.
across it is (Boulard et al., 1998):
(2011). In the following section we briefly describe only the
techniques and theory that are directly related to the methods
0:5
jDPj 2
used in this study. U¼ Cd jDPj (2)
DP r

where Cd is a discharge coefficient of the opening and r is the

1.2. Theory air density. Brockett and Albright (1987) showed that super-
imposing buoyancy-induced and wind-induced pressure dif-
The most widely used technique to measure ventilation rate ferences results in:
of naturally ventilated enclosures is the tracer-gas method,
   
based on the mass-balance equation of the tracer gas in the DP ¼ gðre
ri Þ h
h þ 0:5re Vw
2
Cpe
Cpi (3)
air. The two main methods for measuring ventilation and
leakage rates using a tracer gas are the continuous injection or in which g is the acceleration due to gravity, Vw is the ambient
static method and the pulse injection or dynamic method wind speed, Cp is the wind pressure coefficient and the sub-
(Baptista, Bailey, Randall, & Meneses, 1999). In the dynamic scripts e and i refer to external and internal conditions,
method the tracer gas is injected and allowed to spread respectively, h is the height of opening with respect to ground
100 b i o s y s t e m s e n g i n e e r i n g 1 1 9 ( 2 0 1 4 ) 9 8 e1 0 7
and h is the height of the neutral pressure level with respect to
ground.
In the case of a monospan greenhouse with two openings
of the same area and shape, one on the windward and the
other on the leeward wall, the airflow rate G through the
house due to wind effect is:


Cpw
Cpl 0:5
G ¼ Vw Cd A
2
where A is the opening area, Cpw and Cpl are the pressure
coefficients on the windward and leeward walls respectively.
When a screen is mounted on the openings to exclude in-
sects the discharge coefficient of a screened opening Cdsv is
given (Teitel, 2001) by:
1 1 1
¼ þ
C2dsv C2d C2ds
in which Cd, Cds are the discharge coefficients of the opening
without a screen and the screen, respectively.
Ventilation rates can also be determined from direct ve-
locity measurements at the openings of a building. The mean
and turbulent flow rates through each opening of an Almeria-
type greenhouse were calculated by multiplying the scaled
mean (U*) and turbulent (u0 ) components of the air velocity
perpendicular to the plane of the opening by the area of the
opening (Molina-Aiz, Valera, Peña, Gil, & López, 2009). The
velocity at each opening was measured at several points with
a 3-D sonic anemometer, and scaling of velocity at each
measurement point was required because the measurements
at the various openings were not done simultaneously. A
similar approach was used by Teitel, Liran, Tanny, and Barak
(2008), who measured the air velocity near the openings of a
monospan greenhouse.
In recent years computational fluid dynamics (CFD) ana-
lyses have been used to estimate ventilation rates of buildings.
The ventilation rate of a greenhouse was calculated by Ould
Khaoua et al. (2006) from the transport of a virtual tracer gas
that was released in each numerical cell of the simulated
greenhouse; they assumed that the air velocity fluctuations in
the greenhouse were quite small so that the tracer gas
transport was mainly due to the mean flow. The numerical
simulations used two steps: first a converged steady-state
solution was reached, and then the calculated density, ve-
locity and temperature fields were taken as initial conditions
in solving the transport equation for the tracer-gas concen-
tration under unsteady conditions. The gas concentration in
each numerical cell was initially set to unity inside the
greenhouse and to zero outside the greenhouse. During the
time of the simulation the tracer-gas flow through the open-
ings and its concentration in the enclosure decreased. The
mean tracer-gas concentration decay was described by:
CðtÞ ¼ C0 e
Nðt
t0 Þ
A CFD tool was used also by Hong et al. (2008) to determine
ventilation efficiencies of naturally ventilated multispan
greenhouses in Korea; they indicated that the ventilation rate
could be calculated as the sum of the products of the mean air
velocity at each opening and the area of the opening, but care
is necessary in using this method, because a large opening
sometimes acts as both an inlet and an outlet, simultaneously.
Hong et al. (2008) further indicated that the above-described
method enables calculation of the overall ventilation rate of
an enclosure but not the local ventilation rates in different
regions within it. For this purpose they suggested use of the
tracer-gas-decay method, and used a procedure similar to that
described by Ould Khaoua et al. (2006).
(4) Norton, Grant, Fallon, and Sun (2009) pointed out that many
CFD studies of greenhouse ventilation used the tracer-gas-
decay method to compute ventilation rates; however, they
also pointed out that, unfortunately, although it is an accurate
and effective means of computing the ventilation rate, use of the
tracer-gas decay in CFD simulations is time consuming. As an
alternative, they proposed using the local mean age of air (LMA)
concept. The LMA is defined as the average time for a parcel of
(5) air to travel from a supply inlet area to any location in a venti-
lated room. Norton et al. (2009) further claimed that by volu-
metrically averaging the LMA distribution it is possible to
compute the residence time of air in the building, and by
inverting this value the ventilation rate can be determined far
more efficiently than by using the tracer-decay method. Kwon
et al. (2011) compared results of CFD simulations with those of
tracer-gas experiments to verify the use of the age-of-air
concept under unsteady-state conditions.
The age-of-air concept was used by Ethridge and Sandberg
(1996) to define a measure of air-exchange efficiency, 3a, for
the entire space of a room:
smin
3a ¼ (7)
2hsi
where smin ¼ V/Q is the minimum possible time to complete
one air exchange (i.e., the time taken if ideal ‘piston’ or
‘displacement’ flow occurred) and hsi is the mean age of air in
the room as a whole. The volume of the room is V and the
ventilation flow rate is Q.
The mean age of air in the room as whole can be calculated
from:
ZN
tCex ðtÞdt
0
hsi ¼ ZN (8)
Cex ðtÞdt
0
where Cex(t) is the concentration at the exhaust opening at time t.
The air-exchange efficiency, 3a that is given in Eq. (7) is a measure
of the effectiveness of ventilation air delivery to the room (Awbi,
2003); it is the ratio between the shortest possible time and the
actual average time needed to replace the air in the room.
The purpose of ventilation is to limit exposure to contami-
nants derived from indoor pollutant sources, and the definition
of ventilation efficiency should therefore reflect the perfor-
mance of a system with regard to this effect. Thus, ventilation
(6)
efficiency for an entire space that is in steady state is given by:
Cex
Cs
3v ¼ (9)
hCi
Cs
where Cs denote the concentrations of the contaminant at the
supply opening, and hCi is the average concentration within
the space.
 b i o s y s t e m s e n g i n e e r i n g 1 1 9 ( 2 0 1 4 ) 9 8 e1 0 7 101

The aim of this work is to improve the existing knowledge
on ventilation and basic flow characteristic of a monospan
greenhouse with cross ventilation and in particular to
examine the effect of wind velocity on the air exchange and
ventilation efficiencies in such a structure.
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Experiments
A monospan greenhouse 16 m long and 9.3 m wide, with
gutters oriented north-south was divided into two compart-
ments, each 8 m long. The experiments were carried out in the
northern compartment, in which roses were grown; it had a
floor area of 69 m2 and a volume of about 300 m3 that was
naturally ventilated via two continuous side openings, each
3.2 m2 in area, one in the west wall and the other in the east
wall (Fig. 1). The openings were covered with screens that had
porosity (ratio between open and total area of the screen) of
about 0.35. The mesh sizes of the screen were 751  15 and
228  22 mm in the warp and weft directions, respectively, and
the thread diameters were 261  14 and 259  12 mm, respec-
tively, where the figure after the sign represents standard
deviation. The roses were grown in the greenhouse in six
double rows oriented in the east-west direction.
Ventilation rate was estimated from the decay rate of a tracer
gas (N2O), which was injected into the closed greenhouse by
releasing it in front of a fan that served to mix the N2O into the
greenhouse air. The fan was operated during the injection pro-
cess to achieve a uniform gas distribution. Air samples were
continuously extracted through flexible tubes from eleven
points at various spatial locations and differing heights (see
details in Fig. 1). The samples were mixed and analysed with a
Uras 14 Advanced Optima infrared gas analyser (Hartmann &
Braun analytical, Frankfurt, Germany) which had a 50-ppm
maximum range and resolution of 0.1% of the measurement
range.
When the desired tracer-gas concentration e usually about
50 ppm e was reached gas injection was stopped, the fan was
allowed to operate for an additional 2 min and then was
switched off, allowing the greenhouse air to settle. Then the
side openings were opened and the gas concentration was
allowed to decay through ventilation. It usually took about
15e20 min for the concentration to decay from about 50 to
10 ppm, at which point the experiment was terminated and a
new cycle of gas injection and air mixing was started.
The air velocity within the greenhouse and near the
openings was measured with a USA1 3-D sonic anemometer
(METEK, Elmshorn, Germany), with a resolution of 0.01 m s
1.
The sensor was placed at the centre of the greenhouse at two
heights (1.25 and 2.15 m) and near the inlet and outlet open-
ings. The measurements near each opening were done at
three locations along the opening. Sampling frequency was
5 Hz and the time duration of measurement at each point was
7e10 min. Ambient wind speed and direction were measured
near the greenhouse at 6 m height, with a 2-D ultrasonic
anemometer (Gill Windsonic, Lymington, Hampshire, En-
gland) which had an accuracy of 2%.
2.2. Computational fluid dynamics simulations
The flows in and around a monospan greenhouse with identical
dimensions to those used in the experiments were simulated

Fig. 1 e Schematic view of the northern compartment of the experimental greenhouse. The crosshatched areas represent
the windward and leeward openings. C, N2O sampling point; the values in parenthesis represent height of sampling point
above ground. u, v and w represent the convention used for the velocity components measured by the 3-D sonic
anemometer. Dimensions are in metre.
102 b i o s y s t e m s e n g i n e e r i n g 1 1 9 ( 2 0 1 4 ) 9 8 e1 0 7
with the ANSYS CFX12 commercial software (ANSYS Inc., PA,
USA). A large computational domain around the greenhouse,
260  100  36 m in length, width and height was used, to
ensure that it would not affect the numerical solution of the flow
field outside the greenhouse, and to allow an appropriate defi-
nition of the atmospheric boundary layer. In all simulations a
combination of 3-D structured and non-structured meshes was
used to generate the numerical grids outside and inside the
greenhouse. The total number of elements in most of the results
that are presented here was 1,436,061, and simulations with a
larger number of elements e 2,356,435 e were done to check that
the numerical results were independent of the grid specifica-
tions. The crop and the screens on the openings were simulated
as porous media, and the coefficients of the Forchheimer
equation for the crop and the screen were calculated as
described by Molina-Aiz, Valera, Alvarez, and Madueño (2006)
and Teitel (2010), respectively. A structured Cartesian mesh
was used to generate the crop. The sensible and latent heat
transfer from the crop to the greenhouse air were simulated by
assuming heat and vapour sources in the porous media. The
amounts of heat and vapour generated by the porous media
were fitted to values that had been measured in experiments
and which are given in Teitel et al. (2008). In all simulations the
mesh in regions near the walls and near the porous media,
where strong velocity gradients may occur, was refined by using
the inflated boundary conditions tool of CFX12 and also by
specifying fine volume mesh in those regions. The standard ke3
model was used for turbulence modelling. At the inlet to the
computational domain the airflow was assumed to be incom-
pressible, with a logarithmic distribution of vertical velocity, as
described in detail by Ould Khaoua et al. (2006). When simula-
tion outputs were compared with experimental data the wind
speed at 6 m height in the simulations was fitted to the wind
velocity values measured in the experiments. The outflow
Fig. 2 e Ventilation rate. D, experimental data e tracer-gas
decay (technique (i)); ,, modelling results e pressure
differences across the openings (technique (iv)); B, CFD e
calculated flow rate through the openings (technique (iii));
:, CFD (1,436,061 elements) e tracer-gas decay, sampling
at the same locations as in the experiments (technique
(iia)); A, CFD (2,356,435 elements) e tracer-gas decay,
sampling at the same locations as in the experiments
(technique (iia)); 6, CFD e tracer-gas decay of the whole
space (technique (iib)).
condition, i.e., relative average static pressure equal to zero, was
applied at the outlet of the computational domain. In the
computational domain wall boundary conditions (i.e., no-slip)
were applied to all walls and the soil. Wall-with-slip condi-
tions and no shear were applied to the top of the computational
domain, and symmetry conditions were applied to both side-
walls in the computational domain.
The ventilation rates of the monospan greenhouse at
various wind speeds were estimated by application of the
tracer-gas-decay method, using CFD simulations of the gas
decay. Non-steady-state simulations were performed to
investigate the decay rate of a tracer gas. In carrying out the
transient simulations it was assumed that initially (t ¼ 0) the
air inside the greenhouse comprised 97.86% dry air, 2.13%
water vapour, and 0.01% N2O. The air outside the greenhouse
comprised 97.87% dry air and 2.13% water vapour. The phys-
ical properties of N2O were imported into the simulations
from an ANSYS library. The total time of analysis in each
transient simulation was 2000 s, with time steps of 50 s. The
results of the non-steady-state simulations were also used to
determine the ventilation and air-exchange efficiencies, by
using Eqs. (7) and (9).
3. Results and discussion
Figure 2 shows the ventilation rate as a function of wind
speed. It presents ventilation rate values that were obtained
with four different techniques: (i) experimental measure-
ments of tracer-gas decay in a greenhouse; (ii) use of the
average decay rate of a virtual tracer gas released in transient
CFD simulations, in which sampling was done (a) at the same
locations at which the tracer gas was sampled in the experi-
mental greenhouse, and (b) in the entire volume by consid-
ering the gas-decay rate of the whole space; (iii) use of the CFD
results to obtain values from calculated airflow rates through
the openings; and (iv) use of Eq. (4) which relates flow rate
through openings to the pressure drops imposed on them by
wind forces. In calculating the wind-induced indoor/outdoor
pressure difference we used values of local pressure co-
efficients for walls of low-rise buildings. The pressure co-
efficients at the windward and leeward faces of an exposed,
low-rise building, for a normally incident wind, are Cpw ¼ 0.6
and Cpl ¼
0.35, respectively (ASHRAE, 2005). Buoyancy was
neglected since the vertical distance between midpoints of
leeward and windward openings tended to zero.
Figure 2 shows that the ventilation rate increased with
increasing wind speed, as expected. However, whereas the
results based on techniques (iii) and (iv) suggest that the
ventilation rate was approximately linearly dependent on the
wind speed up to 7 m s
1, the results of techniques (i) and (ii),
which are based on the decay of tracer gas, indicate that
although up to a wind speed of about 4 m s
1 the ventilation
rates were similar to those obtained by techniques (iii) and (iv),
at higher wind speeds the former ventilation rates were
higher than the latter ones; suggesting that there was no
linear dependence of the ventilation rate on wind velocity
with techniques (i) and (ii). Similar results were reported by
Boulard, Feuilloley, and Kittas (1997) who indicated that the
linear dependence of the air-exchange rate on wind velocity
 b i o s y s t e m s e n g i n e e r i n g 1 1 9 ( 2 0 1 4 ) 9 8 e1 0 7
was only partially supported by experiments when the stack
effect could be neglected. Their results related to experiments
done with six different greenhouse and tunnel types equipped
with either roof or side or both roof and side openings.
It can be seen (Fig. 2) that, although there is good agreement
between the results of techniques (i) and (iia), there was
reasonable agreement between those of techniques (iii) and (iv).
Thus, values yielded by techniques (i) and (iia) were lower than
those obtained by the other two techniques ((iii) and (iv)) at wind
speeds above 4 m s
1. Furthermore, using the gas-decay rate of
the whole greenhouse volume in the CFD simulations (tech-
nique iib) resulted in ventilation rates lower than those obtained
by sampling at the specific points (technique iia). It is noted that
the good agreement between the experimental and CFD results
(techniques (i) and (iia)) validates the CFD results.
Figure 2 also shows how the number of elements in the
numerical grid affects the results; it presents ventilation rates
that were obtained by CFD simulations with two different
grids e one of 1,436,061 and the other of 2,356,435 elements e
each at two wind speeds, 2 and 6 m s
1. The difference be-
tween the ventilation rates obtained by simulations with the
different grids is about 12% at both wind speeds and it appears
that increasing the number of elements in the numerical grid
led to poorer agreement with the experimental results.
To further validate the CFD results, in addition to the
above-described comparison between ventilation rates that
were deduced from the tracer-decay technique in experi-
ments and CFD simulations, the velocity vectors measured
with the 3-D sonic anemometer were compared with those
obtained in the simulations. The comparison was made in a
horizontal plane through the mid-height of the side openings,
and the air velocity in the greenhouse was normalised with
respect to ambient wind speed. The normalised air velocity
vectors in a horizontal plane 1.25 m above the ground, and
which coincides with the mid-height of the side openings, are
shown in Fig. 3. The experimental and numerical results both
show that the air entering via the windward opening turns
slightly towards the northern wall. It then continues to flow
towards the leeward opening, through which it exits. The
experimental results show that the air emerged from the
leeward opening with a slight turn towards the south,
whereas the numerical results show a slight northward turn.
The agreement between experimental and numerical results
is very good at the windward opening, but less good in the
centre of the greenhouse and near the leeward opening. It is
noticeable that both the experimental and the numerically
modelled results depict the air velocity at the windward
opening as higher than that near the leeward opening, which
cannot be correct, because the continuity equation would not
be satisfied. However, the decrease in velocity from the
windward to the leeward opening that was indicated by the
simulation results is valid only for the specific horizontal
plane considered in the calculation; in other horizontal planes
that pass through the openings at different heights the change
in velocity from windward to leeward openings would be
different. Indeed, CFD results (not presented) showed that the
flow rates through both openings were identical.
To explore the reasons for the differences between results
obtained with the tracer-gas-decay technique and the other
two techniques ((iii) and (iv)) the results of the transient CFD
103
N
Fig. 3 e Normalised air velocity vectors in a horizontal
plane 1.25 m above ground. , CFD; , experiment.
Vw [ 5 m sL1. represents a normalised velocity equal
to 0.1.
simulations were examined carefully; changes in concentra-
tion and distribution of the virtual tracer gas with time were
investigated. Figure 4 shows the tracer-gas concentration in a
vertical cross-section at the centre of the greenhouse at the
time when ventilation was initiated (t ¼ 0) and at two time
points after ventilation was initiated: t ¼ 300 and 600 s. The
gas concentration at each time point was calculated and
presented for two wind velocities, 2 and 6 m s
1. At the
beginning of the simulation, t ¼ 0, the tracer-gas concentra-
tion was high (100 ppm) and its distribution in the greenhouse
was set to be homogeneous. After 300 s the concentration had
fallen significantly and the gas distribution was no longer
homogeneous. After 600 s the gas concentration decreased
further, and its distribution remained inhomogeneous.
Figure 4 clearly indicates that the reduction in gas concen-
tration is faster when the ambient wind velocity is higher, as
expected; it further shows that the basic assumption of the
tracer-gas technique, that the gas distribution in the green-
house volume is homogeneous (i.e., perfect mixing of the
supply air with greenhouse air), is not realistic. Thus, using Eq.
(1) to determine the ventilation rate may not be accurate,
because the basic assumption used to derive Eq. (1), i.e. ho-
mogeneous gas distribution throughout the decay process, is
not fulfilled.
To further explore the reasons for the differences between
results obtained with the tracer-gas-decay technique and the
other two techniques (iii and iv), the velocity vectors in a
vertical cross-section at the centre of the greenhouse were
plotted (Fig. 5). Figure 5 shows that the flow within the
greenhouse does not lead to perfect mixing of the greenhouse
air, especially at high air velocities; it suggests that at a low
wind speed of 3 m s
1 there are two large contra-rotating
airflows, which may have resulted in reasonably good mix-
ing of the greenhouse air. However, at higher velocities e 5
and 7 m s
1 e the flow is basically from the windward opening
to the leeward opening, and mainly in the lower region of the
greenhouse volume, with very little mixing of the air in the
upper region. Thus, it appears that, under the present
104 b i o s y s t e m s e n g i n e e r i n g 1 1 9 ( 2 0 1 4 ) 9 8 e1 0 7
Fig. 4 e Distribution of tracer-gas concentration in a horizontal cross-section at the centre of the greenhouse. Top, t [ 0;
middle, t [ 300 s; bottom, t [ 600 s.
greenhouse configuration, the assumption of well-mixed air is
more valid at low than at high wind speeds, which supports
the better agreement between the tracer-gas-decay technique
and the other two techniques at low wind velocities.
van Buggenhout et al. (2009) showed that because of
imperfect mixing of a tracer gas, large variations in ventilation
rates may be encountered, which depend on the sampling
positions; furthermore, they outlined several problems asso-
ciated with the tracer-gas technique and indicated that the
errors in the determined ventilation rate can rise to 86% of the
actual ventilation rate. This is consistent with the findings of
Ould Khaoua et al. (2006) and Boulard, Meneses, Mermier, and
Papadakis (1996), who encountered difficulties in getting good
agreement between results obtained with the tracer-gas-
decay technique and those obtained with other techniques
that they used to estimate ventilation rates.
The air-exchange efficiency of the greenhouse at wind
speeds of 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 m s
1 was calculated by using the
simulation results of the transient N2O decay and Eq. (7). To
calculate the integrals in Eq. (8) a procedure described by
Ethridge and Sandberg (1996) was used that takes into account
that with the tracer-decay method experiments are stopped
before the tracer concentration reaches zero. The values ob-
tained were 3a ¼ 0.72, 0.47, 0.33, 0.21 and 0.19, for wind speeds of
2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 m s
1, respectively. The results show that the
value of 3a increased as wind speed decreased. According to
Ethridge and Sandberg (1996) the air-exchange efficiency
changes with the type of flow occurring in the ventilation pro-
cess; the values for various flow conditions are given in Table 1.
The present values of the air-exchange efficiency, at wind
speeds of 2 and 3 m s
1, are in very good agreement with those of
Boulard et al. (1996) who obtained an air-exchange efficiency of
about 0.6 for the case of a two span greenhouse equipped with
continuous roof vents near the gutters, when ambient wind
speed was in the range of 2e3 m s
1.
From Table 1, and the values of 3a that were obtained in the
present study, it is concluded that at a wind speed of 2 m s
1
the greenhouse air undergoes displacement ventilation. At a
 b i o s y s t e m s e n g i n e e r i n g 1 1 9 ( 2 0 1 4 ) 9 8 e1 0 7
Fig. 5 e Velocity vectors in a vertical cross-section at the
centre of the greenhouse. Top, Vw [ 3 m sL1; middle,
Vw [ 5 m sL1; bottom, Vw [ 7 m sL1.
105
Table 1 e Air-exchange efficiency as function of type of
flow.
Flow pattern Efficiency, 3a
Ideal piston flow 100%
Ventilation by displacement 50  3a  100%
Perfect mixing 50%
Short-circuiting 3a  50%
higher wind speed of 3 m s
1 mixing ventilation prevails, and
as the wind speed increases above 3 m s
1 short-circuiting
occurs. The flow pattern suggested by Table 1 and the pre-
sent values of 3a for high wind speeds are consistent with the
flow patterns observed in Fig. 5. Figure 5 shows that at the
higher wind speeds there is significant airflow directly from
the inlet to the outlet. Ethridge and Sandberg (1996) indicated
that severe short-circuiting occurs when the supply and
extraction points are located on opposite sides of the enclo-
sure as in the present case, and the air supply flow is directed
towards the extraction opening.
Next the ventilation efficiency was calculated using Eq. (9).
The ventilation efficiency was calculated for the same wind
speeds at which air-exchange efficiency was calculated: 2, 3,
4, 5 and 6 m s
1. In calculating the efficiency two ’contami-
nants’ were considered, heat and water vapour, which were
generated by the crop throughout the ventilation process and
transferred to the greenhouse air. The efficiency values with
heat regarded as the ’contaminant’ were 3vh ¼ 1, 0.98, 0.9, 0.85,
and 0.89 for wind speeds of 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 m s
1, respectively.
With water vapour as the contaminant the efficiency values
were 3vv ¼ 1, 0.96, 0.86, 0.67 and 0.63 for wind speeds of 2, 3, 4,
5 and 6 m s
1, respectively. Thus, for the particular monospan
greenhouse configuration considered here, at high wind
speeds, ventilation efficiency is greater for heat removal than
for vapour removal. Molina-Aiz, Valera, López, and Álvarez
(2012) investigated experimentally the ventilation efficiency
of an Almeria-type greenhouse in which a mature tomato
crop grew. Using the temperature data that they have
measured and an equation similar to Eq. (9) they have
calculated ventilation efficiency values in the range of
0.68e0.87 for wind speeds of 3.3e8.4 m s
1. Their efficiency
values are similar to present values that were obtained at the
high wind speeds.
It is noticeable that the values of ventilation efficiency are
different from those of air-exchange efficiency. The definition
of the air-exchange efficiency presented in Eq. (7) does not
explicitly involve any contaminant source, whereas the
ventilation efficiency (Eq. (9)) depends on the positions of
contaminant sources and other properties of the contaminant
(Ethridge & Sandberg, 1996). Only for the special case of a
homogeneous passive contaminant source (with the
contaminant generated uniformly throughout the volume at a
constant rate) the values of efficiencies yielded by Eqs. (7) and
(9) are the same. In our present case the heat and water vapour
were only generated in the crop volume, which was a small
fraction of the greenhouse volume. Thus, it is not to be ex-
pected that the ventilation efficiency at a particular wind
speed would be equal to the air-exchange efficiency, as was
indeed observed in the present study.
106 b i o s y s t e m s e n g i n e e r i n g 1 1 9 ( 2 0 1 4 ) 9 8 e1 0 7
This study showed that there may be cases in which the
tracer-gas-decay technique can only provide a rough estimate
of the air-exchange rate. In the specific case of a monospan
greenhouse with longitudinal openings as was studied in
present research, the tracer-gas-decay technique under-
estimated the air-exchange rate as wind speed increased
above 4 m s
1. This behaviour is in agreement with results
reported by Boulard et al. (1996) who claimed that the non-
perfect homogenisation of the air within the greenhouse
leads to the fact that tracer-gas techniques may not allow the
determination of the real airflow but it may characterise the
effective airflow, which can be lower than the real airflow.
For a more accurate analysis of the air exchange it is
necessary to use the CFD approach. With CFD it is possible to
calculate the real airflow through the openings of the house as
well as the detailed flow patterns within the house. As was
pointed out by Bournet and Boulard (2010) recent concerns
related to crop quality require that the heterogeneity of the
flow patterns and temperature and humidity distributions
also be considered in greenhouse management. The max-
imisation of the ventilation rate of the building is therefore
not the only criterion to be considered to evaluate the venti-
lation performance of a greenhouse. This issue is of particular
importance in the case of monospan greenhouses or green-
house tunnels with longitudinal openings. As indicated by
Bartzanas, Boulard, and Kittas (2004), such structures are
characterised by spatial heterogeneity of airflow, air temper-
ature and humidity. This may result in non-uniform produc-
tion and quality and generate also problems associated with
pests and diseases.
Although the CFD approach may provide a good estimate
of the air-exchange rate it should be emphasised that this
approach requires large computer resources. A much simpler
approach would be to use the technique which relates flow
rate through openings to the pressure drops imposed on them
by wind forces. Present study showed reasonable agreement
between the results of these two approaches. They both show
a linear dependence of air-exchange rate with wind speed and
at high wind speeds they provide a better estimate of air-ex-
change rate than the decay of tracer gas.
4. Conclusions
The assumption of a perfectly mixed space, which is a
necessary condition for use of the tracer-gas-decay method to
estimate ventilation rate, may not be valid in naturally
ventilated greenhouses. Thus, deduction of a ventilation rate
by the tracer-gas-decay method may not provide correct
values of the air-exchange rate between the greenhouse and
the environment. Correct values of the air-exchange rate may
be obtained, for a greenhouse with well-defined inflow and
outflow openings, from the mass flow through the openings
by using validated CFD results, or by estimation of the flow
rate through the openings from the pressure differences
across them. The age-of-air concept may be used with results
of CFD simulations to predict the air-exchange efficiency, 3a.
Although the air-exchange rate increases with wind speed,
the ventilation and air-exchange efficiencies may decrease.
When 3a < 0.4 it appears that the tracer-decay method does
not provide a good estimate of the ventilation rate.
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