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Reduction in greenhouse water usage through inlet CO 2 enrichment
Author(s) -
Stacey Neil,
Fox James,
Hildebrandt Diane
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
aiche journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.958
H-Index - 167
eISSN - 1547-5905
pISSN - 0001-1541
DOI - 10.1002/aic.16120
Subject(s) - greenhouse , environmental science , inlet , agriculture , environmental engineering , greenhouse gas , evaporative cooler , humidity , waste management , engineering , agronomy , ecology , meteorology , mechanical engineering , biology , physics
Agriculture is mankind's single largest usage of water, comprising 70% of all water usage. Optimizing water usage in agriculture is therefore crucial to ensuring global water security. A greenhouse is quantitatively modeled as a bioreactor and it is shown that the bulk of the water supplied to a conventionally aspirated greenhouse is lost in the form of humidity. This implies that evaporative losses in agriculture comprise a clear majority of mankind's total water consumption. Inlet CO 2 enrichment using existing membrane materials can minimize the air feed rate required to supply adequate CO 2 for photosynthesis, thereby mitigating evaporative losses. © 2018 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J , 64: 2324–2328, 2018