JPS61177931A - Plant culture apparatus - Google Patents

Abstract

(57) [Summary] This bulletin contains application data before electronic filing, so abstract data is not recorded.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Industrial Application Field] The present invention relates to a plant cultivation device for cultivating plants under illumination by an artificial light source.

[Conventional technology]

Agriculture is an industry that has its origins in the Stone Age, but to this day, it has continued to operate in a constant struggle with nature. Nature provides us with abundant blessings, but at the same time it fights us with great power. Agriculture requires extreme labor from farmers, leading to unstable production and also causing chemical damage and environmental pollution from pesticides. Furthermore, in an industrialized society, the future of agriculture is not bright at all, as the country continues to urbanize and the agricultural population continues to decline.

Under these circumstances, agriculture is also undergoing diversification. One such trend is plant factories, which are attempting to introduce full-scale industrial technology into core areas of cultivation. A plant factory uses an artificial light source instead of sunlight, a nutrient solution instead of soil, artificially controls all cultivation conditions, and cultivates plants quickly and stably in isolation from nature. This is what I am trying to do. It is certainly unreasonable not to use sunlight, but on the other hand, it has a number of advantages, such as being able to produce anywhere, stable production, high land productivity, and no pesticides.

Plants are cultivated in plant factories in buildings where temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide concentration, wind speed, etc. are controlled.

It is performed under artificial lighting. The performance required of a light source is to efficiently emit light of a wavelength necessary for plant growth at a predetermined intensity.

The predetermined intensity varies depending on the type of plant, but generally, approximately 20 kilolux is required in terms of illuminance. It is difficult to meet these requirements with a single light source, and therefore, high-pressure sodium lamps, mercury lamps, and metal halide lamps, which have high luminous intensity and efficiency, are used in combination with fluorescent lamps to cover a wide range of wavelengths.

The main lighting source, such as high-pressure sodium lamps, is -
Due to the high luminous intensity of lamps, the lamps must be installed at considerable heights. Otherwise, it will not be possible to irradiate the plants with light at a uniform illuminance.

[Problem that the invention seeks to solve]

As the distance between the plant and the lamp increases, the volume of the building increases, which increases the construction cost accordingly. Furthermore, since it is necessary to disperse the light, the utilization efficiency inevitably decreases. Furthermore, the amount of air circulating within the building increases, increasing air conditioning costs. On the other hand, if you try to use fluorescent lamps with good wavelength characteristics, their emission intensity is low, so if you want to obtain an illuminance of 20 kilolux, you will have to arrange the fluorescent lamps with almost no gaps between them.

By the way, even if the light intensity is less than 20 kilolux, for example about 5,000 kilolux, the plant body is uniformly irradiated with it.
Plants can grow at a high rate if cultivation conditions, including carbon dioxide concentration and temperature, are maintained appropriately.

For this reason, the present invention.

The object of the present invention is to provide a plant cultivation device that reduces the power consumption of light and illumination and is compact.

[Means for solving problems]

The present invention has been made to achieve the above objects,
The cultivation space is divided into small spaces by installing partition walls with high light reflectance, and a light reflecting plate is installed in each small space, and the plant cultivation device is designed to irradiate low-intensity light by shortening the distance between the artificial light source and the plants. This is what we provide.

[Effect]

Since a small number of fluorescent lamps and plants are placed close to each other and confined in a narrow space, the plants can be cultivated satisfactorily even with low-intensity light.

〔Example〕

1 and 2 are a perspective view and a front view showing an embodiment of the present invention. (1) is a cover, and (2) is a reflector that is installed in each room and whose inclination angle can be adjusted freely.

(3) is a partition wall with high light reflectance that partitions the culture chamber, and (4) is a fluorescent lamp used as an artificial light source. (5) is a hydroponic solution tray, (6) is a defeated plant, and (7) is a pipe for supplying or discharging the hydroponic solution. Note that the distance between the cultivated plants (6) and the fluorescent lamps (4) is very short, and is determined by the illuminance required for plant growth, and the throughput is about 11 or more to 20α.

According to the plant cultivation device of the present invention configured as described above,
Since the seedlings of the plants to be cultivated are set at appropriate intervals inside the cultivation body, the environmental conditions such as temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide concentration, wind speed, nutrient composition and temperature of the hydroponic solution, and dissolved oxygen concentration inside the cultivation body are controlled. However, the conditions are controlled to be favorable for plant growth by a device (not shown) that controls these environmental conditions.

Thereafter, the fluorescent lamp (4) is turned on and cultivation of the plants (6) is started.

In this embodiment, a plant cultivation device consisting of four chambers is shown, but if necessary, this device can be expanded in the horizontal direction and stacked in the height direction.

By the way, when cultivating leafy vegetables such as saladana using conventional cultivation equipment, light irradiation with an illuminance of about 20 klX is required. On the other hand, according to the plant cultivation device according to the present invention, even with weak light irradiation of 13 klx or less and about 5 ktx, if the temperature and carbon dioxide concentration are suitable, 20 klx can be produced.
It was found that a growth rate comparable to strong light irradiation with tx could be obtained. Namely.

Even with an illuminance of 9 klx, the temperature is 25℃ and the carbon dioxide concentration is 1
When cultivated with FI: 4000ppm, saladana is 2
We were able to achieve high-speed cultivation that doubled in a day. Even when the illuminance was lowered to 5 klx, high-speed cultivation was possible, although the growth rate was slightly lower. When irradiating light from above as in the past, the illuminance is as low as 5■X.

This is a big difference from an extremely slow growth rate.

Next, the economic efficiency of saladana production using the plant cultivation apparatus according to the present invention was investigated. When standardized with a lamp that can obtain a luminous flux of 100 lumens per 1Wa, the power required to produce 100g of saladana was approximately Q, 7 KWH, which was a considerable power saving. This kind of power saving is achieved! 1. With the plant cultivation device according to the present invention, the distance between the lamp and the plant body is shortened. 1. By cultivating in a narrow space equipped with a reflector, the direction of light irradiated to the plant body can be adjusted. This is partly due to the fact that plants can now effectively receive light.

〔Effect of the invention〕

As is clear from the above description, according to the present invention, light energy for plant growth is reduced.

Furthermore, since the device itself has become more compact, the energy required for air conditioning, etc. can be reduced, and construction costs can also be reduced, which is a significant effect.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a perspective view showing an embodiment of the present invention, and FIG. 2 is a front view of FIG. 1. 2... Reflector plate, 3... Partition wall, 4... Fluorescent lamp,
6...Cultivated plants. In each figure, the same reference numerals indicate the same or corresponding parts.

Claims (1)

[Claims] In an apparatus for cultivating plants using an artificial light source, the cultivation space is divided into small spaces by providing partition walls with high light reflectivity, and within each of the small spaces, a light reflecting plate is provided and the distance between the artificial light source and the plant is shortened to provide low illuminance. A plant cultivation device characterized in that it irradiates light.