• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.487-494
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• 2019

In this paper, we designed IOT(Internet of Things) based hydroponic plant factory in order to avoid the effects of fine dust penetrating into the soil, and proposed the PLC(Programmable Logic Controller) control methods. The designed plant factory could monitor the density of oxygen, the density of nutrient solution, temperature and humidity through touch screen and smart phone, and control the heater and cooler, ventilation and dehumidifier, and wavelengths of LEDs to grow plant in appropriate environments.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Agricultural Machinery Conference
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• 2000.11c
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• pp.744-748
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• 2000

The characteristics of $CO_2$ exchange between plant and human modules, absorption rate of NO$_2$, and growth of lettuce were examined in an urban-type plant factory(UPF). With 150 lettuce plants, $CO_2$ concentrations of plant module were 600 ~ 700$\mu$mol mol$^{-1}$ at average leaf weight of 130g.plant$^{-1}$ and 900~1100$\mu$mol.mol$^{-1}$ at 75g.plant$^{-1}$ for one and two persons' stay in the human module, respectively. When the air of 0.13, 0.30 and 0.45 $\mu$molㆍmol$^{-1}$ NO$_2$ in a human module was circulated ON/OFF 10/20min between the human and plant modules, $NO_2$ decrement in the chamber during 10 min was 0.040, 0.109, and 0.149 $\mu$mol, respectively. The lettuces grown at 0.45 $\mu$molㆍmol$^{-1}$ $NO_2$ during experimental period showed no significant differences in growth factors such as leaf width, leaf length, leaf area and fresh weigh, and in the quality between treated and control.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.38C no.5
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• pp.479-485
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• 2013

In this paper, we propose a smart farming system using the visible light communication based on the software defined radio (SDR) technology and the conventional RF radio. The proposed system can continuously monitor growth environments of the LED plant factory and automatically control the LED plant factory to keep optimal growth environments. Furthermore, by creating a database from various growth factors, the LED plant factory can be efficiently managed.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.525-530
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• 2003

This study was carried out to develop a vacuum nozzle seeder for the automation of large seeds sowing of fruit vegetables and rootstocks. Moreover, the seeding efficiency was examined to find the optimum operating condition considering high precision seeding. The important operating factors for high seeding rate were typically nozzle diameter and absorbing vacuum pressure. The optimum nozzle diameters were found 1.5, 1.5 and 2.0 mm for Chambak, Tuktozwa and Hukjong while the optimum vacuum pressures were 8.0㎪, 10.6㎪ and 5.3㎪, respectively. Under the optimum operating condition, the results indicated that the maximum seeding rates were 97.6％, 98.8％ and 97.6％ respectively for Chambak Tuktozwa and Hukjong. The vibrating acceleration of the hopper did not make any significant effects on the seeding rate when the vacuum pressure reached 8.0㎪ and the sowing rate became higher with lighter seed. As the seed became heavier, the larger diameter of nozzle was recommended 1.5mm of the nozzle diameter was found to be applied for the experimental seeds. The vacuum pressure was also found 8.0㎪ - 13.3㎪ at that time.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.64 no.12
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• pp.1761-1767
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• 2015

This paper deals with the solar tracking performance using a small heliostat, the light reduction rate of the sun light, and the performance of uniform irradiation of LED light for a plant factory. A high precision encoder is attached to the heliostat to improve tracking accuracy. As a result, our heliostat-based solar tracking systems track efficiently the movement of the sun light in experimental tests. The reduction rate of the sun light in the plant factory is then measured by using an illumination sensor. The average reduction rate is 4.29%, which represents lower light reduction rates. In uniform irradiation tests of LED light, sixteen points are measured, and overall deviations of irradiation were within eight percents.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Bio-Environment Control Conference
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• 1996.05a
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• pp.91-115
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• 1996

In the recent years, protected horticultural facilities have been modernized and glasshouses are also propagating in Korea, even most vegetables production are conducted in the traditional plastic houses covered with, for example, PVC film for just temperature keeping. It would limit the productivity and competitivity of the vegetable production industry without automatization and high quality year round production. A plant factory, aimed to produce vegetables in the limited areas, was initiated in Christensen farm, Denmark in 1957, and widely propagated in some developed countries. As it has the automatized system which enables to keep optimized environment conditions, it will be the best facility for high quality products as well as year round planned production. However, we have not even started the plant factory production. Since the plant factory is requiring lots of resources, besides plant cultivation technologies, such as environment control, automatic engineering and robotics, our approach to the development of plant factories should be minded on Practical Plant Factories considering our current farming practices and least capital needs rather than blindly employing the advanced technologies from developed countries. Thus, Korean plant factory development can be initiated with year round leaf vegetables production in NFT or DFT cultivation system instead of the moval bed system, in which aerial environment factors such as light, temperature, humidity and CO$_2$ concentration and root environment ones such as solution concentration, temperature, pH and water soluble oxygen shall be automatically controlled. And the seeding, seedling and transplanting operations shall be accomplished in the house entrance, and the harvesting and grading opreations shall be conducted in the house exit. For practical plant factories, environment control technologies including artificial light source, illumination and air conditioning, automatic management for nutrient solution and automatic production line of moval bed system, transplanting and harvest should be developed along with researches on the cost reduction of factory building construction.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.279-285
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• 2023

The demand for the fresh leaf of hooker chive, which is mainly used as functional roots and contains dietary sulfur or saponin, is increasing, but the leaves are only harvested 3-4 times per year under conventional field conditions. A plant factory system with different light qualities or intensities was applied for year-round production of the fresh leaves. Hooker chive (Allium hookeri) roots were hydroponically cultured under the plant factory with a mixture of blue plus red LEDs (Light-Emitting Diodes) and fluorescent lights for 50 weeks. Maximum leaf growth was attained with the 1.5 dS/m EC in the culture medium under the plant factory. The average leaf and shoot numbers of hooker chive grown hydroponically under a mixture of 200 µmol/m²/s LEDs increased by 147% and 140%, respectively compared to those under 100 µmol/m²/s LEDs at the 10th harvest. The leaf length of hooker chive grown under the LEDs treatment with the lowest light intensity significantly increased by 27% compared with the natural light treatment at the 10th harvest. However, there was no significant difference in leaf pigmentation between natural and 200 µmol/m²/s LEDs treatments. Plant factory with the mixture LEDs of blue and red lights can be applied for year-round production of hooker chive fresh leaves to ensure a stable supply of leafy vegetable throughout the year.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.16 no.11
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• pp.7990-8000
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• 2015

Plant factories are plant cultivation systems which produce farm products uniformly under the controlled environmental condition regardless of seasons and places. Thermal flow in the plant factory is an important parameter in cultivating plants. In this research, we study thermal flow characteristics for a hybrid plant factory with multi-layer cultivation shelves using computer simulation techniques. In order to obtain numerical solutions for thermal flow characteristics, a finite volume method was applied. We consider a low-Reynolds-number ${\kappa}-{\epsilon}$ turbulence model, incompressible viscous flows, and pressure boundary conditions for numerical simulation. Commercial software Solid Works Flow Simulation is then used to investigate characteristics of thermal flows in the plant factory applying several different inflow air velocities and arrangements of cultivation shelves. From numerical analysis results, we found that temperatures in cultivation shelves were uniformly distributed for Case 3 when the inflow air velocity was 1.6 m/s by using a blower in the plant factory. However in Case 1 lower temperature distributions were observed in test beds, TB2 and TB3, which indicated that additional temperature control efforts would be required. Average shelf temperature increased by $3^{\circ}C$ using artificial light source (DYLED47) with 50% blue and 50% red LED ratios. Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society.

• Journal of Bio-Environment Control
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.182-187
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• 2013

In closed plant production system like plant factory, changes in environmental factors should be identified for conducting efficient environmental control as well as predicting energy consumption. Since high relative humidity (RH) is essential for crop production in the plant factory, transpiration is closely related with RH and should be quantified. In this study, four varieties of lettuces (Lactuca sativa L.) were grown in a plant factory, and the leaf areas and transpiration rates of the plants according to DAT (day after transplanting) were measured. The coefficients of the simplified Penman-Monteith equation were calibrated in order to calculate the transpiration rate in the plant factory and the total amount of transpiration during cultivation period was predicted by simulation. The following model was used: $E_d=a*(1-e^{-k*LAI})*RAD_{in}+b*LAI*VPD_d$ (at daytime) and $E_n=b*LAI*VPD_n$ (at nighttime) for estimating transpiration of the lettuce in the plant factory. Leaf area and transpiration rate increased with DAT as exponential growth. Proportional relationship was obtained between leaf area and transpiration rate. Total amounts of transpiration of lettuces grown in plant factory could be obtained by the models with high $r^2$ values. The results indicated the simplified Penman-Monteith equation could be used to predict water requirements as well as heating and cooling loads required in plant factory system.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.277-284
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• 1998

This study was conducted to develop m automatic pot-seedling transplanter for plant factory. The transplanter consists of a gripper, row-spacing control device, nursing tray transfer system, growing trough transfer system, and gripper moving device. The gripper picks up pot-seedling. The gripper moving device moves the gripper between nursing tray and growing-flat. Nursing trays are moved to workspace by the nursing tray transfer system. The growing trough transfer system was developed to move growing trough to workspace. The row-spacing control device was used to adjust the distance between adjacent plants traversely. The results of this study are as follows. The transplanting capacity of the developed transplanter was 7.1 seconds per cycle or 1.18 second per pot-seedling. Successful planting was 98.9% without seedlings and 95.8% with seedlings.