Performance of a home plant factory (HPFAL) for indoor lettuce production using computational fluid dynamics

It is estimated that 60% of the world’s population currently lives in urban areas, and it is projected that by 2050 this will increase to 80%. In Mexico, the population movement indicates that it can reach 150.8 million people.
Meeting the needs of more people meant a great challenge for the ability to manage and restore the natural environment on which basic life processes depend.
The question of how to feed future cities finds alternatives in urban agriculture.
Plant factories, vertical farms, rooftops, and green walls are some of the agricultural production techniques with a substantial increase in this decade.
The reintegration of food production in cities offers opportunities to meet the challenges.
Urban agriculture is driven by the desire to reconnect food production and consumption.
The objective of this work was to build a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of a home-plant factory with artificial light (H-PFAL) used in order to analyzed the performance of climate in home plant factory.
Particular aspects are presented for the importation of indoor crops and their basic physiological, climatic and management requirements.
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) was used to give certainty to the information about climatic conditions in an essential plant factory with artificial light to produce salad plants in a kitchen.
This proposal is also called H-PFAL. CFD simulations showed that temperature, humidity, and wind are an inner range of crop requirements in a kitchen.
The main factor for management is the photoperiod with LEDs lights.

International Symposium on New Technologies for Sustainable Greenhouse Systems: GreenSys2023

J. Flores-Velazquez, C.E. Aguilar-Rodríguez, C. Mendoza-Perez

climate control, horticulture, dynamic modeling, smart cities

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2025.1426.56