Seawater greenhouse

[1] The seawater is pumped into the greenhouse to create a cool and humid environment, the optimal conditions for the cultivation of temperate crops.

[1] The temperate crops successfully cultivated included tomatoes, spinach, dwarf peas, peppers, artichokes, French beans, and lettuce.

The second pilot design was installed in 2000 on the coast of Al-Aryam Island, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

A pipe array is installed to improve the design of the greenhouse by decreasing the temperature and increasing the freshwater production.

These projects have enabled the validation of a thermodynamic simulation model which, given appropriate meteorological data, accurately predicts and quantifies how the seawater greenhouse will perform in other parts of the world.

[8] The greenhouses are 15 degrees cooler than the outside temperatures which enables the production up to 130,000 of kg of vegetables per year and up to 20,000 liters of fresh water per day.

[8] Additionally, the project includes revegetation by soil reclamation of nitrogen-fixing and salt-removing desert plants by repurposed waste products from agriculture and saltwater evaporation.

[10] The volume of fresh water is determined by air temperature, relative humidity, solar radiation and the airflow rate.

[16][17] In 1996, Paton and Davies used the Simulink toolkit under MATLAB to model forced ventilation of the greenhouse in Tenerife, Cape Verde, Namibia, and Oman.

[19] They studied three options:perforated screen, C-shaped air path, and pipe array, to find a better seawater circuit to cool the environment and produce the most freshwater.

This can be implemented to improve seawater greenhouses in hot arid regions such as the second pilot design in the United Arab Emirates.

[19] In 2018, Paton and Davis researched brine utilization for cooling and salt production in wind-driven seawater greenhouses to design and model it.

[5] By using the brine valoristation method of wind-driven air flow by cooling the greenhouse with seawater evaporation, salt can be produced as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 1. Front of Seawater Greenhouse on coast, Tenerife , 22 August 2011
Figure 2. Back of Seawater Greenhouse on coast, Tenerife , 22 August 2011
Figure 3: Seawater Greenhouse Cardboard [ 11 ] [ 12 ] [ 5 ] [ 13 ] [ 14 ] [ 15 ]
Figure 4: basic concept of seawater greenhouse for brine utilisation.
Figure 5: Geometric model of shade net for pressure drop determination showing (a) local co-ordinate system and (b) symmetry planes (dotted lines) used to simplify modelling.