Vertical farming with low-maintenance and durable cable routing

In aeroponic cultivation, low-maintenance energy chains help with efficient water supply.

Aeroponic – an innovative form of cultivation to produce enough food in an urbanized world. The idea: high-rise buildings are converted into farms, agriculture will be carried out vertically in the future. These cultivation techniques require special machines to supply nutrients and irrigate the plants. A patented truss system transports enriched water directly to the plant roots. In an empty warehouse in Minneapolis, as much is to be produced on around 4000 square meters as in conventional agriculture on over 40 hectares. The truss system works with low-maintenance plastic energy chains.

Profile

What was needed: plastic energy chain
Requirements: A low-maintenance, durable and reliable pipeline solution was sought.
Industry: Agriculture
Success for the customer: The irrigation system in combination with the energy chain saved nozzles and minimized maintenance costs. The system is designed to be durable and low maintenance.

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Problem

Living Greens Farm is a start-up aeroponics farm. In recent years, the company has developed and patented important developments in the way the future of cultivation could look like. One of the main patents is a spray mist system that supplies enriched water to the roots of the plant. The start-up is currently expanding its growing operations with an empty warehouse in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In terms of its performance, this plant represents the equivalent of 100 hectares of cultivated land.
Not only is the facility designed to deliver healthier, fresh local produce in a large metropolitan area, but it also does so year-round with 95% less water. Space requirements and water consumption are two fundamental advantages of aeroponic cultivation over field and hydroponics. However, there is also the problem with aeroponic systems that they require a high number of nozzles for irrigation (typically 1 nozzle per square foot of grow area), which in turn involves a lot of maintenance.

Solution

Living Greens Farm's patented mist system and the use of a polymer energy chain have allowed the company to keep nozzle maintenance to a minimum. In the start-up's current R&D cultivation area, 6,144 square meters of harvest are grown with only 288 nozzles. This could only be achieved by introducing a well-thought-out system. The nozzles move over a travel distance of about 16 meters in order to precisely irrigate a large cultivation area. The process and thus the savings in nozzles are also made possible by the energy chain in the plant. This carries the 2.5 cm thick irrigation hose with it when the nozzles move. The specially developed materials of the polymer energy chains enable maximum service life in a wide variety of application situations.

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