Thermal properties and temperature regime of champignon cultivation substrate

In designing and analysing the systems of automatic regulation of substrate temperature for champignon cultivation it is necessary to know substrate thermal properties (thermal conductivity and specific heat), intensity of substrate self-heating and the distribution of overtemperature caused by self-heating within a substrate briquette. It is proposed to estimate substrate thermal properties by the nonsteady method of combined determination of thermal characteristics using a flat constant power heat source. The scheme of experiments, mathematical expressions for calculating thermal indicators, examples of temperature variation, examples of thermal indicators calculations and the established mean thermal indicators for champignon cultivation substrate are presented. An electrical analogy model of thermal process in substrate briquette was made for self- heating investigations. It was established by modelling that the distribution of overtemperature caused by self-heating within the thickness of a briquette is parabolic. The mean specific heat of substrate self-heating was established by comparison of modelling and experiments results. An equation to assess the overtemperature of substrate briquette centre in engineering calculations is presented.