Where is the way out for the development of plant LED lighting factories?

Many advanced countries have invested in plant factories because it can not only solve the food crisis, but also be affected by the worsening environment. Plant factories have become the trend of future agricultural development.

However, the lack of agricultural enterprises in Taiwan has led to the majority of plant factories being small factories of less than 100 square meters, mostly laboratory or open production lines, and most of them plant cheap fruits and vegetables, resulting in losses, but still attract many large enterprises. Invest.

On the whole, in addition to the unstable food prices, Taiwan still faces a year-on-year decline in self-sufficiency. So far, only about 30% remain. Compared with Japan and South Korea, although Taiwan has a superior food growth environment, its self-sufficiency rate is Lower, the construction of plant factories can not only help Taiwan stabilize food prices, but also hope to increase food self-sufficiency rate in the future. However, it is worthwhile to explore the feasibility of implementing plant factories in Taiwan.

Plant factory light source is the key

The plant factory integrates the four major points in order to maximize the benefits, including construction, equipment, environmental control, and growth materials. Of course, these four elements are complementary and not indispensable. There are three kinds of plant factories, sunlight-use type, sunlight and artificial light source combined type and completely artificial light source sealed type.

The plant factory equipment needs to be combined with various industries, including light source, fan, hygrometer, water source adjustment, carbon dioxide supply equipment, etc. Among them, the light source is the most critical, and the plant factory with less light source is not the artificial light source factory. It is a greenhouse that depends on the sun. Others like carbon dioxide are dispensable. Increasing carbon dioxide emissions is mainly to make plants grow faster and better.

Artificial light source is one of the most important key equipments in closed plant factories. The light source can be divided into CCFL, metal halide lamp, high pressure sodium lamp, fluorescent lamp and LED lamp. Fluorescent tubes are often used as artificial light sources in Japanese plant factories because the price of LED lamps is more than 10 times higher than that of fluorescent tubes a few years ago. From an investment point of view, it is more appropriate to choose fluorescent tubes; but with the rapid price of LED lamps As the decline has taken place, more and more manufacturers have adopted LED plant lights.

Since the average plant lighting time of closed plant factories is about 12 to 18 hours, power consumption has become a major consideration for plant factories. Nowadays, the overall supply of LED industry is oversupply, resulting in a rapid price decline. Many manufacturers have put LED lighting into plant factories, and have achieved good results, but the initial input cost is still higher than T5 fluorescent tubes and high-pressure sodium lamps, but long life, power saving, and volume. Small, reaching the full spectrum of light sources, no heat radiation, etc., so that the application of LED in plant factories is rapidly emerging.

Different technology depends on environmental improvement

The technological development of plant factories in different countries is very different, and the improvement of different climates and equipments is carried out. Among them, the development environment of Japanese plant factories is the closest to the development environment of Taiwan plant factories.

In the case of plant factories in the Netherlands, most of the plants are mainly planted with flowers and herbs. At present, most of the plant factories in the Netherlands are still dominated by sunlight. However, due to the high latitudes, the nights are long and long, and high-pressure sodium lamps are used to fill the light. . The Netherlands is currently the country with the best development of plant factories. The latest development of horticultural crops for sustainable energy-saving greenhouse production technology and application, combined with the illumination technology, light quality, luminous flux and remote automatic monitoring system of artificial light sources such as LED, effectively improve production. quality. The future development of plant factories in the Netherlands is the concept of the greenhouse (Zonneterp), in which the concept of recycling, saving energy and water, and achieving self-sufficiency.

In order to solve the growing problem of urban carbon dioxide, Professor Despommier of the United States proposed to build large-scale construction farms in the city. In addition to absorbing carbon dioxide, it can also use urban sewage to irrigate food. On the first floor, shops and restaurants can be opened for direct use by consumers. It also saves on shipping costs and carbon emissions. That is to say, North American countries are developing towards vertical three-dimensional agricultural buildings. This is not beneficial for the city of Taipei, which is not so expensive. However, in remote areas or abandoned industrial buildings, it can be improved and reactivated. It can reduce land use and increase planting density.