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World’s Largest Indoor Farm is 100 Times More Productive

OGEvilgenius

Member
Veteran
It says in the article they were developed and manufactured by GE specifically for their project.

It's interesting for sure.
 

amannamedtruth

Active member
Veteran
id like to see how baby greens do under those things. Plant, harvest once a week for a few weeks...great way to get quick greens. I wonder how much the get for a head of butterleaf.
 

titoon29

Travelling Cannagrapher Penguin !
Veteran
Interesting R&D, but totally useless as an industrial system.

For sure they did good work on their marketing, but their arguments are extremly short minded from an agricultural point of view, to the point it s almost dishonest.

More details can be found here : http://www.fieldrobotics.org/~ssingh/VF/Challenges_in_Vertical_Farming/Schedule_files/SHIMAMURA.pdf

Where you learn p 22 that they use about 370 MWh or 370,000 kWh per month to produce 300,000 lettuces head / 30 tons of lettuce (10,000 / 100 kg per day)

Meaning in term of energy, approx 12 kWh is needed for a kg (2.2 pounds) of lettuce, representing about what you can extract from a gallon of petrol. Yep, a gallon of petrol per kg of lettuce. And that doesn' t account for the energy to manufacture the whole systems, for instance the LEDs.

and 10,000 lettuce head per day @ 100g per head ??? Well, in real life (ask.com) " On average, a head of lettuce weighs about 800 grams"...

80% less food waste ? Their powerpoint mentionned that they waste about 2/3% of the biomass, compare to 30-40% for conventionnal growing. Where the waste go back to the ground, or can be composted, therefore should not be considered as a waste but rather nutrients and water for the soil.

I could probably go on....

Maybe if lettuce was illegal, it would be worth it ^^

T.
 

amannamedtruth

Active member
Veteran
nice breakdown there.

Kind of one of the main reasons I mention organics in the first post. They could do better growing microgreens in flats of coco or heads in small containers, compost that 'waste' for sure. Switch to aquaponics, almost there...

The japanese have had this thing for over-priced, 'high end' produce for a bit.

http://firstwefeast.com/eat/worlds-most-expensive-fruits/

Think they could generate that energy using solar?
 

titoon29

Travelling Cannagrapher Penguin !
Veteran
nice breakdown there.

Kind of one of the main reasons I mention organics in the first post. They could do better growing microgreens in flats of coco or heads in small containers, compost that 'waste' for sure. Switch to aquaponics, almost there...

The japanese have had this thing for over-priced, 'high end' produce for a bit.

http://firstwefeast.com/eat/worlds-most-expensive-fruits/

Think they could generate that energy using solar?

Hey amannamedtruth,

thanks for sharing your finding by the way !

Indeed organic/aquaponics would be better ! However my calculation is only based on the energy cost for lighting and powering up the system, doesn't even take in account the nutrients ( wonder why they didn't made a real life cycle analysis ^^). So in any case, I don't really see this going large scale anytime soon, esp with increasing energy prices.

Regarding solar, sure they could. It would take approximately, in Japan, 10 times the square footage of the factory to produce those 370 MWh per month, about 14,000 m2.

:tiphat:
 

stoned-trout

if it smells like fish
Veteran
I seen that .. I done stacked tray growing with leaf lettuce...I got simpson lettuce to grow anywhere with low lighting too...I miss my greenhouses.....those setups would work good with sprouts too..i like beansprouts...
 

Ftscustm

Member
You do have to love the innovation, if not the true costs out lined by those at I.C.Mag who have their scientific heads screwed on. To me this is the seed of an idea, the beginning of possibility and most of all, hope: we all need that.
 

sprinkl

Member
Veteran
Why on earth wouldn't they profit from the sun simply by getting a glass roof? With some clever rotation they wouldn't need half of their lights...
While indoor MJ growing is proving to be way more expensive than outdoor, they're now going to try to invent the wheel with vegetables.
I guess the lighting industry needs some cashcow to keep "inventing" "new" technologies at breakneck turtle speed lol.
 

OGEvilgenius

Member
Veteran
Hey amannamedtruth,

thanks for sharing your finding by the way !

Indeed organic/aquaponics would be better ! However my calculation is only based on the energy cost for lighting and powering up the system, doesn't even take in account the nutrients ( wonder why they didn't made a real life cycle analysis ^^). So in any case, I don't really see this going large scale anytime soon, esp with increasing energy prices.

Regarding solar, sure they could. It would take approximately, in Japan, 10 times the square footage of the factory to produce those 370 MWh per month, about 14,000 m2.

:tiphat:

The amount of energy required to produce a solar cell is immense. Solar energy really isn't very promising as far as solving energy concerns - at least not with current tech, maybe those 3d nano cell panels have a chance.

Hemp production on the other hand...
 

titoon29

Travelling Cannagrapher Penguin !
Veteran
You do have to love the innovation, if not the true costs out lined by those at I.C.Mag who have their scientific heads screwed on. To me this is the seed of an idea, the beginning of possibility and most of all, hope: we all need that.


Agreed Ftscustm, we love innovation here. What I personally don't like hence my posts, is to attach it to biased numbers in order to sell it. We should be able to like it for what it is, a prototype, and not because it actually make 10,000 lettuce heads, which are 8 times lighter than actual "classic" lettuce heads, if you know what i mean :biggrin:

Why on earth wouldn't they profit from the sun simply by getting a glass roof? With some clever rotation they wouldn't need half of their lights...
While indoor MJ growing is proving to be way more expensive than outdoor, they're now going to try to invent the wheel with vegetables.
I guess the lighting industry needs some cashcow to keep "inventing" "new" technologies at breakneck turtle speed lol.

Hey sprinkl, I guess they gotta make some $$$, which they wouldn' t if they were selling a greenhouse that actually use the sun as you said !

The amount of energy required to produce a solar cell is immense. Solar energy really isn't very promising as far as solving energy concerns - at least not with current tech, maybe those 3d nano cell panels have a chance.

Hemp production on the other hand...

Hey OGEvilgenius, thanks for your comment

I am indeed very aware of the energy needed to make solar cells.
It is quite a bit, talking about immense, well I don' t really agree with that word.
As far as I know, at the moment the energy payback for a solar panel is about 2-3 years.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032112006478
It means that it will take 2 to 3 years for the solar panel on your roof to return the energy that was used to make it. Then, it is "free" energy from the sun for the rest of the life of the panel, which should be about 15 years minimum.

In no case I was advocating its uses in that indoor farm case, which I stated earlier is a total waste of energy, I was answering to the OP which was asking about solar, to develop why it is not really appropriate in that case. :)

I agree with you, solar is not the answer to our energy concerns, the answer will lie in stopping wasting so much energy. Then maybe, we can use a combination of renewable energies to sustain ourselves ;) So for instance, let' s stop thinking that it is ok to use 12 kWh to produce a kg of lettuce, or to use the sun to transform its energy to electricity than re transform it into lighting for growing large scale, with all the losses involved with each step to transform the energy, and the embeded energy required to manufacture the appliances needed for this "farm" .

:tiphat:
 
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titoon29

Travelling Cannagrapher Penguin !
Veteran
Hey OGEvilGenius,

Let' s talk hemp, since I think this would also be interesting.

Sorry for all the following numbers, they are needed, but the conclusion will be made more simple to understand for those who want to go straight to the point ;)

According to https://www.votehemp.com/PDF/The_Case_for_Hemp_as_a_Biofuel2008.pdf

305 kg of ethanol can be produced with one hectare of hemp
with a density of about 0,8, it would make about (305/0.8) 380 L/hectare yield.
A Liter of ethanol contains about 23.5 MJ/L or 6.5 kWh / L

With a specialy designed engine to produce electricty, we could expect about 80% energy recovery ( can' t really find easy source on that so I doubled the efficiency of diesel engine)

So for a Liter of ethanol, we could get about 5.2 Kwh.
Hence for an hectare about (5.2 * 380 ) 2000 kWh, or 2 MWh usable.

Let' s consider a beautiful climate, where you could grow 4 crops a year.
That would lead to 4*2 = 8 MWh / hectare / year, or about 0.7 MWh / hectare / month

If this hemp was used for powering this factory all year long,
to sustain such a production, we would need 370 / 0.7 = 530 hectares.
530 hectares of hemp to produce ethanol, which will be then converted to 30 tons of lettuce per month.

A leafy type of lettuce will produce about 500 kg / ha or 0.5 tons/ha . (http://agriinfo.in/?page=topic&superid=1&topicid=956 )
In our beautiful theoretical climates, we could expect a crop every two months, so 6 crops a year.

Hence, if we used these 530 hectares to produce lettuce directly, we would produce 6*530*0.5 = 1530 tons per year, or 132 tons per/month.

With the same surfaces :
Grow Hemp, Ethanol, Power the farm, Grow Lettuc, Crop Lettuce : 30 tons per months (not including manufacturing of the farm, nutrients)
Grow Lettuce, Crop lettuce : 132 tons per months.


Here is why we should focus on simple systems, low energy use, and keep prototypes such as the one demonstrated as what they are, prototypes.

Please feel free to comment my calculations!
 

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