Environmental Monitoring and Control of Vertical Farming Installation

Vertical farming is a relatively young but growing industry, which is believed to be a solution to growing food demands, ever-decreasing amounts of arable land, and unpredictable climate conditions.
 

Application

Vertical farming is an agricultural method that allows plants to be grown in vertical incubators. Rather than growing flat on the ground using horizontal roots, vertical farming encourages plant roots to grow vertically. This allows plant propagation and growth to be managed closer together than in traditional greenhouses. These factors allow for a more compact farm with more production output per square foot. 

Figure 1. Vertical Farming
 

Challenges

Aeroponics and hydroponics are enabling technologies for vertical farming. Aeroponics is a plant-cultivation technique in which the roots hang suspended in the air while a nutrient solution is delivered to them in the form of a fine mist. Hydroponics is the process of growing plants in sand, gravel, or liquid, with added nutrients but without soil. Both require monitoring and control to ensure that the correct levels of nutrients are reaching each plant. Some of the environmental factors affecting vertical farmers are temperature, lighting, and humidity. An imbalance in any of these factors can result in the loss of product and profitability.

The challenge for this end-user customer was the lack of a way to efficiently gather and monitor the necessary data. This end-user was depending on operators to periodically monitor the vertical farming environment and react to alerts if a parameter fell out of desired conditions. However, the inability to react quickly to an anomaly resulted in damaged crops and wasted costly resources.

Yokogawa was called upon to help this end-user collect and view the data necessary to reduce the waste of resources and provide confidence in the health and predictability of the crops.

Solution

Yokogawa partnered with the vertical farming end-user and determined that, based on the number of data points to be managed and the diverse types of measurement required, this was an ideal application for supervisory monitoring and control solutions.

A combination of IoT sensors such as the Yokogawa Sushi sensor and third-party IoT sensors was installed to gather real-time data on temperature, light and nutrient levels, and humidity. That data is now gathered by a supervisory monitoring and control system, STARDOM, which holds the parameters for each measurement and enables operators to instantaneously make changes to keep parameters within their appropriate ranges. The deployment of Yokogawa’s CI Server allows for remote access to the owners of the operation to view their assets and understand their overall production status in a single, consolidated user environment.

Key Advantages

Sushi sensor

• Long-lasting battery life up to four years (based on a one-hour refresh rate)
• Easy configuration with an Android smartphone
• IP66/ 67 rated with FM Approval

STARDOM

• Hot swap modules and live battery replacement
• PC-less maintenance via SD card
• Online download & maintenance

CI SERVER

• Systems, equipment, and devices can be integrated across multiple facilities