For many years now, Italian engineering company Vifra is known as a manufacturer of dedicated high pressure fog systems to control humidity in flower and vegetable greenhouses. Their high pressure fog systems are used all over the world to increase the humidity during the day, when sunshine and high outside temperatures create a greenhouse climate that is often too dry.
During the night however, growers are often struggling with too high humidity levels as plants start evaporating. A common action is that they start with a typical venting strategy and increase their minimum pipe temperature to dehumidify their greenhouses. As humid, but also heated air is lost throughout the vents, this type of dehumidification becomes an expensive habit.
For this reason, Vifra has introduced the V-Dry dehumidification system. It is a series of dehumidification units that come in various sizes and capacity, but are all designed from a plug and play and 'hassle free' perspective. Vifra analyzes the crops, sizes and climate and calculates the type of installation and by using the airflow from the existing fans, the units can be installed in a flick of a switch.
"Whether you are growing in a greenhouse or in an indoor vertical farm, every grower has problems with excess humidity. Not only temperature and climate wise, but also in terms of diseases as many fungal bacteria and disease spores thrive in a humid climate at night", explained Vincenzo Russo of Vifra, whose company profiles itself as a solutions provider for any humidity related problems.
"There are existing dehumidification systems on the market, but up till now they were either complicated, heavy and large units or fragile non-commercial systems. Our professional, but easy to install smaller V-Dry system offers a simple but still robust solution to this problem."
Despite the smaller size of the system, the V-Dry still offers enough dehumidifying capacity. "We have smaller units that can condensate 100 liters in 24 hours, but we also have larger systems that are able to condensate 1,000 liters every 24 hours. This makes the system very flexible and adaptable to every situation. The smaller units can for example be easily installed in smaller greenhouses or indoor grow operations, but we also have larger units that can go with larger operations.
Vifra uses specific calculations based on the size of the growing operation, the climate conditions, the type of crop and other important factors to provide a dehumidification solution for each specific situation. "Each country, crop and even the growers preferences and skills in how he grows his crop influences the eventual design of the solution."
The units from Vifra are basically plug and play that only require an electrical input for the installation. "The units can be operated and commanded from a humidity sensor or from an output signal of the climate computer. They can also be installed parallel and in series and allow manual control. Vifra's units can furthermore be easily integrated in existing situations as they take advantage of the existing air flow from existing fans."
According to Vifra, the dehumidification units can help to save on the energy costs, as the windows can kept closed at night. This does not only result in savings on heating costs but also conserves water as more condense water is kept inside. "The condense water from the units can be captured and recirculated", explained Russo. "It is good quality water that can be reused in the greenhouse, for example with the fog system."
Russo experiences a lot of interest for the system. "We have helped many (organic) growers of basil and lettuce with the system. They experience less problems with diseases like powdery mildew. As well as this we have installed a system at a Dutch phalaenopsis grower. The small size of the system makes it furthermore very interesting for installation in indoor grow and vertical farm operations."
For more information:
VIFRA S.r.l.
info@vifraitalia.it
www.vifraitalia.it