Abstract
The implementation of air conditioning devices for climate control in large agricultural warehouses is required to keep adequate atmospheres for several plant species and industrial or human activities. Factors as temperature, air velocity or humidity are fundamental on plant growing or product conservation. Diffusers geometry and their placement strongly affect temperature and velocity resulting fields. In the case study presented, a metallic structure warehouse in the south of Spain is considered, assuming that very warm outside conditions (temperature of 380) are reached outside. An evaporative cooling system of low energy consumption is used to cool the warehouse, reducing the extreme temperature outside to allow human activity inside the warehouse in acceptable conditions. The cooling system uses only a fan and a small water pump, generating humid air breeze across wet pads.
Diffusers separation is investigated for an optimal cooling of the warehouse using CFD techniques. The complexity involved due to convective and diffusive terms, buoyancy forces and nonlinearities of the flow governing equations, make it necessary in practice to develop individual numerical simulation for each diffuser geometry, climate scenario, boundary conditions and objective climate control conditions.
