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Aspects of CFD modeling of fan and pad evaporative cooling system in green-
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 2nd PALENC Conference and 28th AIVC Conference on Building Low Energy Cooling and
Advanced Ventilation Technologies in the 21st Century, September 2007, Crete island, Greece
Aspects of CFD modeling of fan and pad evaporative cooling system in green-
houses
A. Sapounas, C. Nikita – Martzopoulou
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
T. Bartzanas
Technology Park of Thessaly, Greece
C. Kittas
University of Thessaly, Greece
ABSTRACT
A methodology approach in order to simulate numeri-
cally (CFD) a greenhouse equipped with fan and pad
evaporative cooling system is presented. Using the main
aspects of evaporative cooling systems in terms of heat
and mass transfer, the flow and boundary conditions of
the simulation model are identified integrating both the
external and internal climatic conditions. The crop (to-
mato) was simulated using the equivalent porous me-
dium approach by the addition of a momentum source
term. Preliminary calculations were carried out in or-
der the pressure drop, occurred in crop model due to
air flow, to be determined as a function of leaf area and
stage of crop growth. The temperature and humidity of
incoming air and the operational characteristics of fans
were specified to set up the CFD model. The numerical
analysis was based on the Reynolds-averaged Navier-
Stokes equations in conjunction with the realizable k-
ε turbulence model. The finite-volume method (FVM)
was used to solve the governing equations. The 3D full
scale model was solved in several differencing schemes
of various orders in order to examine its accuracy. The
simulation approach was used mainly to identify the
critical parameters of microclimate of greenhouse and
the regions were these have to be measured during the
upcoming experiments which will take place in Farm of
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Results show the
influence of the different airflow rates on greenhouse
microclimate, indicating that the proper choice of ven-
tilation rate is crucial factor in order to improve the ef-
ficiency of evaporative cooling systems.
1. INTRODUCTION
The current trend in greenhouse cultivation is to ex-
tend the production season, in order to maximize the
use of greenhouse equipment, extend the export sea-
son, increase the annual yield per unit area and increase
PALENC 2007 - Vol 2.indd 885
885
the profitability. Nevertheless, in many Mediterranean
greenhouses such a practice is limited because the cool-
ing method used (mainly ventilation and shading) does
not provide the desired conditions, especially during the
hot summer months.
Natural ventilation and roof shading are the most com-
mon techniques. Ventilation reduces greenhouse over-
heating, but it may even enhance the risk of water stress
because it often increases crop transpiration (Seginer,
1994). Kittas et al (2001) reported that high ventilation
rates were not, a priori, the best solution for alleviating
crop stress in greenhouses during summer conditions.
Shading screens mounted externally or internally, may
be used to reduce radiation inside the greenhouse but
the effective temperature reduction is not really pro-
portional to the shading rate. Willits and Peet (1993)
showed that externally mounted black polyethylene
films were less than 50% effective in reducing energy
and temperature gains compared to their commercial-
ly given values, while white shading cloths were only
slightly more effective.
If the greenhouse air temperature has to be kept near
or below outside ambient temperatures, some form of
cooling must be provided. Evaporative systems for
cooling greenhouses have been developed to provide
the desired growing conditions in the greenhouse dur-
ing the hot period of the year. The principle underly-
ing direct evaporative cooling is the easy conversion
of sensible to latent heat ()onsaturated air is cooled by
exposure to free and colder water, both thermal isolated
from other influences. Some of the air’s sensible heat
transfers to the water and becomes latent heat by evapo-
rative some of the water while the latent heat follows
the water vapour and diffuses to the air. Direct evapora-
tive cooling can be done by spraying water droplets in
a naturally ventilated greenhouse (by low or high pres-
sure fog systems), or by forcing ambient air through wet
pads. Both produce a temperature drop with an absolute
humidity rise in the greenhouse, which contributes to
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 886 2nd PALENC Conference and 28th AIVC Conference on Building Low Energy Cooling and
Advanced Ventilation Technologies in the 21st Century, September 2007, Crete island, Greece
decrease the vapour pressure deficit and moderate the
transpiration demand (Katsoulas et al., 2001). Various
works on evaporative cooling systems applied to hor-
ticulture, mainly fog systems, were already published,
and, among others, those by Montero et al. (1981, 1990)
and Giacomelli et al., (1985). Most of these works ana-
lyse the thermodynamic efficiency of the system and its
climatic effects. Seginer (1994) found that evaporative
cooling systems are mainly effective when crop transpi-
ration is low, and Fuchs (1993) reported that a highly
transpiring crop combined with a proper ventilation rate
is the most effective mechanism to keep leaf tempera-
tures moderate. A theoretical study was conducted by
Arbel et al. (1999) to evaluate an evaporative cooling
system for greenhouses by installing uniformly distrib-
uted fog generating nozzles in the space over the plants.
Landsberg et al., (1979), proposed a theoretical model
for the efficiency of evaporative cooling in different
physical conditions and Bowen ratios. One limitation
of this model is the a priori specification of the sensible
heat to latent heat ratio rather than its deduction from
actual crop behaviour. Moreover, this model was not
tested against experimental data. More recently, Willits
(2000) proposed a model to predict air and crop tem-
peratures as a function of ventilation rate and external
temperature and Kittas et al. (2003) present and vali-
date a model to predict temperature gradients in a large
evaporative cooled greenhouse.
The advantages of this method lie in its simplicity of
operation and control and also in that it does not entail
any risk of wetting the foliage. The main disadvantages
are high cost and lack of uniformity of the climatic con-
ditions which expressed with large temperature and hu-
midity gradients along the greenhouse (from evaporative
pads to extracting fans). The amplitude of such gradients
is affected by many factors such as the geometry of the
greenhouse, the outside climate conditions, the ventila-
tion rate of the extracting fans and the flow rate of the
water in the evaporative pads. In order to determine the
influence of each parameter experimental investigations
could be carried out, but these would be very expensive
in time and money. Moreover it is very difficult to give
fairly identical and stable boundary conditions in a field
experiment, due to unstable and unpredictable weather
conditions. Dynamic (Landsberg et al., 1979) or ana-
lytical models (Kittas et al., 2003, Willits 2003) can be
used alternative for this purpose. Recent progress in
flow modelling using computational fluid dynamics is
also a good alternative. Computational fluids dynam-
ics is an advanced technique for design in engineer-
ing; it is increasingly being used to analyze greenhouse
microclimate with respect to structural specifications
(Boulard and Wang, 2002; Bartzanas et al., 2004).
Aim of the present study was is to develop a methodol-
PALENC 2007 - Vol 2.indd 886
ogy approach in order to simulate numerically (CFD)
a greenhouse equipped with fan and pad evaporative
cooling system in order to identify the critical parame-
ters that affect the efficiency of fan and pad evaporative
cooling systems in greenhouses. The next step will be
the experimental verification of the proposed numerical
model and the comparison of the numerical results with
the results obtained by previous developed and experi-
mentally tested analytical model (Kittas et al., 2003)
which considered the greenhouse as a heat exchanger.
The finite-volume method (FVM) was used to solve the
governing equations on the computational grid of a 3D
full scale model. In computation, several differencing
schemes of various orders are outlined and their accu-
racy is examined.
2. MATERIALS AND METHODS
The CFD technique numerically solved the Navier-
Stokes equations and the mass and energy conservation
equations. The three dimensional conservation equa-
tions describing the transport phenomena for steady
flows in free convection are of the general form:
∂ (U Φ ) ∂ (VΦ ) ∂ (WΦ )
+ + = Γ∇ 2Φ + SΦ
∂x ∂y ∂z (1)
In Eqn (1), Φ represents the concentration of the trans-
port quantity in a dimensionless form, namely the three
momentum conservation equations (the Navier-Stokes
equations) and the scalars mass and energy conserva-
tion equations; U, V and W are the components of ve-
locity vector; Γ is the diffusion coefficient; and SΦ is
the source term. The governing equations are discre-
tised following the procedure described by Patankar
(1980). This consists of integrating the governing equa-
tions over a control volume.
The commercially available CFD code Fluent® (1998)
was used for this study. Fluent® code uses a finite vol-
ume numerical scheme to solve the equations of con-
servation for the different transported quantities in the
flow (mass, momentum, energy, water vapour concen-
tration). The code first performs the coupled resolution
of the pressure and velocity fields and then the others
parameters, like temperature or water vapour concen-
tration. Special items like the mechanical or climatic
behaviour of the rows of tomato crop are determined
using a customization, i.e a routine included in a used
defined file (UDF) and built for the determination of the
parameters exclusively relevant to the vegetation. The
domain of interest was generated and then meshed us-
ing the integrated pre-processor of Fluent, Gambit.
The grid structure was an unstructured, quadrilateral
mesh with a higher density in critical portions of the flow
subject to strong gradients. The mesh consists of 53920
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 2nd PALENC Conference and 28th AIVC Conference on Building Low Energy Cooling and 887
Advanced Ventilation Technologies in the 21st Century, September 2007, Crete island, Greece

cells for the half of the greenhouse, as a geometrical used. A thermal gradient was also observed in the vertical
symmetry of the model allows solving the model sym- direction, from greenhouse ground to greenhouse roof.
metrically. After several tries with different densities, However, the largest ventilation rates are not always the
the calculations were based on a 15 m (in x direction) best solution to cool the greenhouse. The air velocity
by 8 m (in y direction) by 4.17 m (in z direction, ridge near the crop and the temperature difference must also
height of greenhouse) grid (Fig. 1). This results from an be taken into account since there are important factors
empirical compromise between a dense grid, associated influencing the uniform growth of crop.
with a long computational time, and a less dense one,
associated with a marked deterioration of the simulated
results. Moreover the grid quality was checked using as
a criterion the EquiAngleSkew criterion (Fluent, 1998)
and it was characterised as very good.
Wall type boundary conditions was imposed along the
floor (39 °C), the roof (35 °C) and the side walls (35
°C). The classical no-slip boundary conditions are as-
sumed for the walls. The standard k-ε model (Launder
and Spalding, 1974) assuming isotropic turbulence
was adopted in this study to describe turbulent trans-
port. The species model was activated to account the
transport of air vapour inside the greenhouse. The crop Figure 1. Air temperature distribution along greenhouse length at
was simulated using the equivalent porous medium ap- the middle of the greenhouse  (case 1), - - - - - - (case 2) and
proach (Boulard and Wang, 2002) by the addition of a ■■ (case 3).
momentum source term, due to the drag effect of the
crop, to the standard fluid flow equations. Spatial heterogeneity of air velocity and climate inside
The simulation model was solved for three different greenhouse interfere with plants activity and influence
ventilation rates corresponds to the air flow through the largely crop behaviour through their effects on crop gas
fans. The ventilation rates in terms of m3 m-2 s-1 for the exchanges, particularly transpiration and photosynthe-
three tested cases were, 0.0245 (case 1), 0.0184 (case 2) sis. For instance increasing air velocity inside the green-
and 0.0123 (case 3). For all the cases the external dry house increases convective heat transfers and hence re-
bulb temperature was 35 °C, the internal dry bulb tem- duces the leaf – air temperature difference. Furthermore,
perature of the incoming air exactly after the pad was air velocity might be expected to increase photosynthe-
27 °C, with mass fraction of water vapour of 0.0132 sis because of the reduced boundary layer resistance to
which leads to 59.80% air relative humidity. The im- the transport of carbon dioxide. Air velocity just after
posed boundary conditions are the average daily values the evaporative pads was 0.8 m s-1 when the highest air-
from measurements in the experimental greenhouse in flow rate was used and it was reduced to 0.6 and to 0.4
a typical hot summer day. for m s-1 the other two airflow rates. Mean air velocity
in the middle of the crop level was 0.52 with the highest
3. RESULTS ventilation rate and it was reduced to 0.35 and 0.18 with
the other two used ventilation rates. Figure 3 presents
Numerical results show that the tested cooling system the computed contours of air velocity when the highest
was able to keep the greenhouse temperature several de- ventilation rate was used.
grees below outside air temperature for the three tested
air flow rates of extracting fans. The highest the airflow
rate the lower the air temperature increase the green-
house. Mean air temperature inside the greenhouse was
30.5 °C for the lowest air flow rate and it was reduced
to 29.6 °C and to 28.8 °C for the other two airflow rates.
Although the length of the greenhouse it is no too long,
important thermal gradients were observed in the direc-
tion for evaporative pads to extracting fans. Figure 1 Figure 2. Computed contours of air velocity when the highest
shows the air temperatures along greenhouse length at ventilation rate was used.
the middle of the greenhouse for the three tested airflow
rates: a gradual temperature rise, from the pads to the
fans, reaches almost 6 °C when the lower airflow rate was

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 888 2nd PALENC Conference and 28th AIVC Conference on Building Low Energy Cooling and
Advanced Ventilation Technologies in the 21st Century, September 2007, Crete island, Greece

4. CONCLUSIONS fluence of evaporative cooling systems on greenhouse environ-

A methodology approach in order to simulate numeri-
cally a greenhouse equipped with fan and pad evapo-
rative cooling system was presented in this paper. The
influence of three different airflow rates of the extract-
ing fans on air temperature and air velocity distribution
inside the greenhouse was presented to demonstrate the
capabilities of the numerical code to be used as a design
tool in order to improve the efficiency of fan and pad
evaporative cooling systems in greenhouses. Increas-
ing the ventilation rate beyond a certain value in this
greenhouse does not necessarily produce an overall bet-
ter growing environment for the plants.
The numerical model is proved to be a useful tool in or-
der to study the performance of cooling pad systems for
rational greenhouse design. Furthermore, greater em-
phasis should be placed on the uniformity of conditions
within the crop canopy rather than on the differences
between the pad inlet and fan exhaust locations.
ments. ASAE paper no 81-4027.
Montero, J.I, Anton, A., Biel, C. Franquet, A. (1990). Cooling of
greenhouse with compressed air fogging nozzles. Acta Horticul-
turae 281: 199-209.
Patankar SV. (1980). Numerical Heat Transfer. Washington:
Hemisphere.
Seginer, I. (1984). Transpirational cooling of a greenhouse crop
with partial ground cover. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
71: 265-281.
Watt, R.J. & Brown K.W. (1997). Evaporative Air Conditioning
Handbook. Indian: Fairmont Press, Inc.
Willits, D.H & Peet M.M. (1993). The effect of evaporative cool-
ing on the efficiency of external greenhouse shade cloths. Sum-
mer meeting of the ASAE, Spokane, WA. Paper no 93-4042.

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