| The building is part of the Australia Plant Accelerator Phenomics Facility, and will provide automated, high throughout, non-destructive imaging of plant populations in controlled environments.
The facility will be able to analyse up to 80,000 tests a year as part of research into improving the tolerance of major crops and other important agricultural plants to extreme conditions such as drought and salinity. Features of this plant are as follows:
- Plexiglass construction – this product provides solar and UV light penetration equivalent to clear glass however it’s twin wall construction provides a thermal resistance approximately 3 times higher than glass, this minimising heat loss during winter and conducted heat gain during summer.
- Automated blinds provide shading when solar gains are in excess of plant requirements thus automatically reducing the requirement for refrigerated cooling.
- Air conditioning is provided only to rooms where critical plant experiments require stringent temperature control. The thermal source for this air conditioning is a set of high efficiency water cooled chillers, with optimised control for minimal temperature use.
- Water for the cooling towers which serve these chillers is constantly re-cycled.
- All greenhouse air conditioning units are provided with a “hybrid” feature where they can also operate as evaporative cooling units when conditions are suitable. The Building Managenemt System (BMS) will automatically select to draw outside air rather than room return air and pass this air through an evaporative cooling pad whenever this mode is able to maintain conditions more efficiently than the chilled water cooling process.
- Rooms where less stringent temperature control can be tolerated are provided with evaporative cooling. Heating to these rooms is provided by hydronic radiant tubes which receive hot water from efficient gas fired boilers, thus saving fan energy during heating mode.
- All greenhouse supply air fans are fitted with variable speed drives which can be controlled via the BMS to provide only the minimum required supply air flowrate to suit the required room conditions thus significantly saving fan energy.
- Condensate from air conditioning units is recycled.
- An automated lighting control system is integrated with the BMS to ensure optimised control of lighting and minimal wastage.
- All rainwater from roof capture is harvested and stored for re-use on site, predominantly for irrigation of the plants.
- All irrigation run-off water is captured, treated and stored for re-use on site.
- Fluorescent lighting is used throughout the facility.
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