INFEWS:T2: Saltwater Greenhouse System for Agricultural Drainage Treatment and Food Production

食物-能源-水(少数)联系包括紧密相连的食物、能源和水资源系统。随着世界人口到2050年预计达到90亿，人们将迫切需要在这三个系统之间平衡不同的资源，如可再生能源、农产品和淡水，以实现不同的用户目标，而不会给提供这些资源的生态系统带来不必要的压力。加州中央山谷拥有一些世界上产量最高的农田，但由于目前的农业生产实践和糟糕的地下排水条件，这一农业区的盐分积累已经困扰着其作物生产力，并威胁到其长期农业可持续发展。自1984年以来，联邦和州政府共同努力调查山谷长期存在的灌溉排水问题，但由于复杂的环境和粮食-能源-水(很少)关系问题，仍然缺乏经济上可行的解决方案。然而，这些结合在一起的问题为技术创新提供了机会，不仅可以解决几个相关问题，还可以提供经济提振。目前农业废水处理方法在经济上不可行的一个原因是，海水淡化过程脱离了海水淡化过程，没有考虑粮食-能源-水(很少)的关系问题。因此，这个合作项目将研究利用灌溉排水废水进行可持续粮食生产的可处理咸水温室系统(SGS)中的几个相关问题。该项目的研究目标是系统地研究可处理的咸水温室系统(SGS)中的几个复杂的关系问题，以寻求一个创新的、环境友好的、经济上可行的系统解决方案，以便在加州中央山谷将农业排水再用于可持续的粮食生产。这一目标将通过以下六个具体研究目标实现：1)开发一种经济高效的蒸发器，利用农业排水冷却SGS，实现液体零排放，回收矿物，并将对环境的影响降至最低；2)开发一种经济高效的冷凝器，从蒸发冷却和作物蒸腾中回收水；3)利用冷水储水箱展示白天高效的太阳能加热和夜间的辐射冷却，以显著减少增湿和除湿(HDH)海水淡化过程中的能量；4)通过工程和农业联合设计开发SGS，找到HDH过程和SGS中种植的作物的最佳温度和相对湿度条件；5)测试SGS的性能并研究SGS中的几个相关问题，包括测量水和能量的利用效率、作物产量和质量；以及6)进行成本和性能分析，并论证SGS在农业废水处理中应用的技术和经济可行性。这些目标将通过与来自美国农业部(USDA)三所大学和一个研究中心的综合团队合作实现，这些研究中心包括加州大学默塞德分校、加州大学圣克鲁斯分校、亚利桑那大学和美国农业部帕利耶农业研究服务处。该项目将排水处理过程与灌溉应用过程相结合，这一项目的成功将提供一种创新的系统解决方案，以解决因用咸水灌溉大田作物而导致的农业盐碱化问题的长期挑战。这一解决方案将通过使用咸水灌溉来减缓土地生产力的下降，并保护土地的可耕地不受长期积累的盐分的影响。SGS技术还可以扩展到通过应用海水和咸水进行作物灌溉来确保可持续的温室食品生产。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The Food-Energy-Water (FEW) Nexus includes the closely interconnected resource systems of food, energy, and water. As the world's population expands to an expected 9 billion by 2050, there will be an urgent demand to balance different resources, such as renewable energy sources, agricultural products, and fresh water, across these three systems to achieve different user goals without putting undue strain on the ecosystems that provide these resources. The Central Valley of California has some of the most productive agricultural lands in the world, but salt accumulation in this farming area has already plagued its crop productivity and threatened its long-term agricultural sustainability due to current agricultural production practices and poor subsurface drainage conditions. Since 1984, there have been combined federal and state efforts to investigate the longstanding irrigation drainage issues in the Valley, but there is still a lack of economically feasible solutions due to the complex environmental and food-energy-water (FEW) nexus issues. However, these coupled issues present an opportunity for technological innovation that can not only solve FEW nexus issues, but also provide an economic boost. One reason for the economic infeasibility of current agricultural drainage water treatment methods is the detachment of the desalination process without considering the food-energy-water (FEW) nexus issues. Therefore, this collaborative project will study the FEW nexus issues in a tractable saltwater greenhouse system (SGS) using irrigation drainage waste water for sustainable food production. The research goal of this project is to systematically investigate the complex FEW nexus issues in a tractable saltwater greenhouse system (SGS) for an innovative, environment-friendly, and economically feasible system solution to reuse agricultural drainage for sustainable food production in the Central Valley of California. This goal will be achieved through the following six specific research objectives: 1) develop a cost-effective evaporator using agricultural drainage water to cool down the SGS with zero-liquid discharge, recover minerals, and minimize the environmental impact; 2) develop a cost-effective condenser to recover water from both evaporative cooling and crop transpiration; 3) demonstrate efficient solar heating during daytime and radiative cooling during nighttime with a cold water storage tank to enable significant energy reduction in the humidification and dehumidification (HDH) desalination process; 4) develop a SGS through engineering and agricultural co-design and find the optimal operating conditions in terms of temperature and relative humidity for both the HDH process and crops grown in the SGS; 5) test the performance and study the FEW nexus issues in the SGS, including measuring water and energy use efficiency, crop yield and quality; and 6) conduct a cost and performance analysis and demonstrate technical and economic feasibility of the application of the SGS in agricultural drainage treatment for water reuse and food production. These objectives will be achieved through collaboration with an integrated team from three universities and one research center of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), including the University of California at Merced, the University of California Santa Cruz, the University of Arizona, and Agriculture Research Service of USDA at Parlier. The success of this project to integrate the drainage water treatment process with the irrigation application process will provide an innovative system solution to solve the longstanding challenge of the agriculture salinity problem resulting from irrigation of field crops with saline water. This solution will slow the reduction of land productivity through the use of saline water irrigation and protect land arability from long-term accumulated salinity. The SGS technology can also be extended to secure sustainable greenhouse food production through the application of seawater and brackish water for crop irrigation.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.