Air2O Guest Blog: Indoor Agriculture: The Next Frontier for Technologically-Sophisticated Industrial Applications
For the uninitiated, modern indoor farming facilities are a sight to behold. Not content to stop at square feet—and certainly not your standard backyard hothouse of old—they incorporate acres of enclosed growing space managed to precise environmental conditions. Within each of those facilities are often specialized areas with their own temperature and humidity requirements. With the global value of indoor agriculture estimated at $38 billion annually and aquaponics alone expected to grow more than $10 billion by 2032, the opportunity for companies building the environmental controls and thermal management equipment to regulate those high-tech, highly-precise environments is accelerating as well.
What does modern indoor agriculture look like?
The easy answer is that it depends on which room you’re in. It can look like soldier plants in lock-step marching away as far as the eye can see, all at the same height and stage of growth. It can look like three stories of vertical growing systems stacked to the ceiling, a riotous cascade of leaves, fruit and vegetables inviting you to look ever upward. It can look like your basic back-of-the-warehouse room where cutting and packaging happen. And it all has to be temperature- and humidity-controlled.
Estimated by its owners to be the world’s largest indoor organic farm, the Soli Organic facility in San Antonio, Texas, is as big as a city block, with rows upon rows of produce tended by automated high-tech systems that seed, feed, transport and harvest plants throughout their growing stages. It’s high-density farming, growing in one acre what might normally require 100 acres of land using traditional methods. In this facility, germination requires the temperature to be kept at a steady 80o F and 100% humidity—the former not so easy to come by in a sweltering Texas summer, the latter a seemingly weekly occurrence. Even though the outside of the building is buffeted by any weather that comes its way, indoor conditions must remain steady. Never mind that much of the steadying is provided by equipment located outside the walls, like rooftop heating and cooling units.
Closer to home, Copperstate Farms is one of the largest indoor cannabis producers in North America. Their greenhouse, located in Snowflake, Arizona, encompasses 1.7 million square feet of canopy, with 40 acres “under glass,” a term for its renowned greenhouse area awash in natural sunlight. Because they specialize in medical marijuana, growing conditions must be finely calibrated to maintain each strain’s specific quantities of THC, CBD and other ingredients. Thermal variation is not their friend. In addition to growing spaces, the campus also includes a processing facility, commercial kitchen, and extraction and hydrocarbon labs, all of which have wildly different temperature and humidity requirements.
Air2O’s most recent agriculture installation was for an entirely different environment—the cold northern climes of British Columbia, Canada, where temperatures drop well below 0O F on a fairly regular basis. They’ve also been known to climb into the triple digits in the summer, which makes for some intricate calculations when it comes to heating and cooling facilities over the course of the seasons. On that 20,000 sq. ft. cannabis facility project, we worked with a partner to tightly integrate our state-of-the-art units with the client’s building management system into a single control system to give them the exceptionally fine-grained control of their air handling units (AHUs) to maintain precise environmental specifications at all times.
And it’s not always about new builds. We did an HVACD equipment installation project at a 22,000 square foot cannabis facility in Northern California that required us to replace the underperforming equipment the growers had in place. While that may sound like a simple rip-and-replace job, it’s far from it when retrofitting a large space with modern technologies and units that weigh thousands of pounds across a far-flung rooftop system. When all was said and done, we designed a system of 30 18-ton units servicing 30 individual flower rooms. More on what we do at Air2O in a moment.
Suffice it to say, indoor agriculture requires an incredibly well-calibrated balance and precise controls that are as reliable as they are technologically sophisticated. Not only are there external conditions to contend with, but soil, plants, machinery, lights, water, fertilizer and farmers all contribute oxygen, nitrogen, methane and other gases to the indoor atmosphere. They also cause temperature fluctuations that must be accounted far beyond that of the ambient space. To add an extra degree of difficulty, plants require different growing conditions as they mature, which means the rooms inside of the facility must be maintained to varying specifications.
Thermal management systems for indoor agriculture
Soli, Copperstate and the Canadian facility are just two of the hundreds of indoor agriculture facilities in North America, and there are thousands more worldwide. If industry events are your litmus test of market legitimacy, Indoor Ag-Con in Las Vegas is growing like a—ahem—weed, with 90+ speakers over a two-day period in 2023 and a 50% increase in expo brands. Globally, events such as Singapore International Agriculture Week and London’s World Agri-Tech host thousands of stakeholders focused on building agri-food capacity and resilience, including those providing the technology and equipment to make it happen.
Into this cornucopia of opportunity steps Air2O, a global leader in advanced thermal management solutions particularly suited to large-scale, mission-critical facilities. Based right here in Phoenix, we engineer systems for data centers, semiconductor manufacturers, lithium-ion battery production facilities and yes—indoor agriculture at an industrial scale.
Whether we’re talking aeroponics, aquaponics, hydroponics or any of the myriad other “-ponics” involved in growing plants indoors, regulating the atmospheric conditions inside cavernous indoor agricultural facilities is an exercise in delicacy and precision. It’s also an exercise in cost efficiency. Who among us has not contemplated the high cost of heating and cooling our homes and businesses? Many indoor growing facilities are on the cutting edge of energy efficient technologies and cultivation methods because, quite simply, they have to be to remain profitable. In addition to innovative engineering and cutting-edge plant science, the controlled environment agriculture (CEA) industry uses computer-controlled systems to create ideal crop growing conditions in indoor facilities.
Air2O: thermal management innovators
Our parent company, Eren Groupe, is an inspiration. A pioneer in the renewable energy sphere, Eren Groupe supports entrepreneurs who develop innovative technological solutions serving energy transition. We are incredibly fortunate to have earned their trust, and they continue to invest in innovation and open new avenues for growth for us across industries.
Air2O has developed several technologically sophisticated solutions for the CEA industry, from indirect evaporative cooling for low humidity ambient criteria to energy recuperation and desiccant dehumidification for low dew point conditions. Our experience in environmental control for indoor agriculture and deep understanding of plants’ cultivation specifics allows our team to design optimal HVACD systems tailored to any project, anywhere in the world. Plants don’t sleep, and many indoor agriculture facilities, not beholden to the rhythms of seasons or natural sunlight, operate around the clock. Our systems are designed to run continuously yet cost-effectively to maximize productivity. Advanced energy saving options such as winter economizers and adiabatic cooling take advantage of ambient environmental conditions. Extensive controls packages with versatile programming options helps operators maintain tight trending of set points.
It is an honor for us to be a part of the Arizona Technology Council, which has enabled us to become part of an amazing community of talented innovators and entrepreneurs focused on making our state a leader in technological advancement in fields as diverse as agriculture and semiconductor manufacturing. If you’re curious, head over to air2o.com and check out the work we do for companies in Arizona and countries around the world.