Comprehensive evaluation of a semi-solar greenhouse:Energy, exergy, and economic analyses with experimental validation

This study deals with dynamic modeling and analyzing of an innovative semi-solar greenhouse structure applying MATLAB software from the viewpoints of energy, exergy and economic. This Modeling is applied to predict the temperatures of four different points inside the semi-solar greenhouse, regarding the evapotranspiration of the crop. Measured data recorded from the constructed typical semi-solar greenhouse is used to evaluate the results of the proposed thermodynamic analysis. Measurements during the experiment show considerable temperature difference of 20 ℃ between the indoor and outdoor air. The mean values of 5.94% and 2.06℃ for MAPE(Mean Absolute Percentage Error) and RMSE(Root Mean Squared Error) indicates the accuracy of the thermal simulation. Furthermore, in different heat and mass transfer processes, the total exergy destruction values are analyzed. The target of this research is considered as providing suitable environmental conditions for the inside of the greenhouse. In this respect, the greenhouse air unit cost for each time step of one minute is inspected. By increasing the interest rate from 10% to 20% the greenhouse air unit cost raises almost twice. Decrease of about 45.36 % in total exergy destruction is obtained by the technique of applying double layer glass as the greenhouse cover.