Insect Farm Climate Control via Segmented Air Conditioning
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current insect farming technologies face challenges in maintaining uniform temperature and humidity levels across insect cages, leading to unpredictable outcomes and inefficiencies in insect development due to micro-climates and temperature gradients within farming rooms, especially at larger scales.
Innovation Solution
A climate control system comprising a central air conditioning unit connected to local climate control devices, which condition air with precise temperature and humidity control for each insect cage, using a network of pipes to ensure consistent conditions across multiple cages, reducing temperature differences to as low as 1°C and maintaining stable humidity levels.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Use of energy by stationary object
If room-level air conditioning is used, then energy consumption is reduced, but temperature uniformity across cages deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the farming room into multiple climate zones, each served by its own air conditioning unit. Each unit independently controls temperature and humidity for its specific zone, ensuring uniform conditions across all cages while optimizing energy consumption by conditioning only the occupied spaces rather than the entire room.
Solution Approach 2:
The system provides localized climate control for each cage or group of cages, allowing independent adjustment of temperature and humidity parameters for different zones. This ensures that each location receives the precise environmental conditions needed, eliminating temperature gradients that occur with centralized room-level conditioning.
2Device complexity
If centralized room-level climate control is implemented, then system complexity is reduced, but cage-to-cage environmental consistency deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The climate control system is segmented into multiple independent units, each responsible for a specific zone. This segmentation allows each unit to be simple and reliable while collectively achieving high environmental consistency across all cages through coordinated operation of the distributed units.
Solution Approach 2:
Each air conditioning unit incorporates sensors and control mechanisms that continuously monitor temperature and humidity in its zone, providing feedback to adjust operations in real-time. This feedback ensures consistent environmental conditions across all cages while maintaining manageable system complexity through automated local control.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The system achieves predictable and efficient insect farming by minimizing temperature and humidity variations between cages, improving development consistency and reducing energy consumption by conditioning air at the individual cage level rather than the room level.
Implementation Method 1
a first air temperature control unit (105) connected to said local climate control device (106) through said first pipe (103a), for controlling the air temperature of air flowing through said first pipe (103a) to the local climate control device (106)
Implementation Method 2
an absolute air humidity control unit (140) in fluid connection with said second pipe (130), for controlling the absolute air humidity of air flowing through said second pipe (130) to the local climate control device (106)
Data Source
Figure 1A
Figure 1B
Figure 1C
AI summary
The invention relates to a climate control device (100, 100a, 1000, 1000a) for controlling the temperature and humidity of air supplied to colonies of insects cultured in an industrial scale insect farm. In particular, the invention relates to a controllable air conditioning system comprising a network of pipes connecting at least one cluster comprising at least one insect farming cage (113, 113a-113d), such that air is conditionable in the cages at the cluster level. More specifically, the invention relates to a system comprising a central main air conditioning facility (101) providing temperature conditioned air and absolute air humidity conditioned air to each of a number of local air conditioning devices (106), each separate local air conditioning device providing temperature conditioned air and absolute air humidity conditioned air to each of a plethora of clusters of insect breeding cages separately, said cages housed in an temperature conditioned farming room. This way, insects in cages housed in farming rooms are farmed under improved conditions with regard to minimized cage-to-cage temperature differences and differences in relative air humidity, due to the use of the climate control device of the invention.