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

INFEWS:T2：用于农业排水处理和食品生产的盐水温室系统

• 批准号: 1856112
• 负责人: Yanbao Ma
• 金额: $ 250万
• 依托单位: University of California - Merced
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-09-01 至 2024-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1856112&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: INFEWS; T2; Saltwater; Greenhouse; System

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.

粮食-能源-水（FEW）关系包括粮食、能源和水等密切相关的资源系统。随着世界人口到2050年预计将增至90亿，将迫切需要在这三个系统中平衡不同的资源，如可再生能源、农产品和淡水，以实现不同的用户目标，而不会对提供这些资源的生态系统造成过度的压力。加州的中央谷拥有世界上最高产的农业用地，但由于目前的农业生产实践和地下排水条件差，这一耕作区的盐分积累已经困扰着其作物生产力，并威胁着其长期农业可持续性。自1984年以来，联邦和州政府一直在共同努力，调查流域长期存在的灌溉排水问题，但由于环境和粮食-能源-水（FEW）关系问题复杂，仍然缺乏经济上可行的解决方案。然而，这些相互关联的问题为技术创新提供了机会，不仅可以解决FEW关系问题，还可以促进经济发展。当前农业排水处理方法在经济上不可行的一个原因是淡化过程的分离，而不考虑食品-能源-水（FEW）关系问题。因此，本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盐水温室系统（SGS）中的几个关系问题。 本项目的研究目标是系统地调查复杂的FEW关系问题，在一个易处理的盐水温室系统（SGS）的创新，环境友好，经济可行的系统解决方案，再利用农业排水可持续的粮食生产在加州的中央谷。 这一目标将通过以下六个具体的研究目标来实现：1）开发一种具有成本效益的蒸发器，利用农业排水来冷却SGS，实现零液体排放，回收矿物，并最大限度地减少对环境的影响; 2）开发一种具有成本效益的冷凝器，回收蒸发冷却和作物蒸腾的水; 3）利用冷水储存罐展示白天期间的有效太阳能加热和夜间期间的辐射冷却，以使得能够在增湿和脱盐（HDH）脱盐过程中显著降低能量; 4）通过工程和农业协同设计开发SGS，并为HDH工艺和在SGS中种植的作物找到温度和相对湿度方面的最佳操作条件; 5）测试SGS的性能并研究SGS中的少数几个关系问题，包括测量水和能源利用效率、作物产量和质量; 6）进行成本和性能分析，论证SGS在农业排水处理中用于水回用和食品生产的技术和经济可行性。这些目标将通过与美国农业部三所大学和一个研究中心组成的综合小组合作实现，其中包括位于默塞德的加州大学、加州圣克鲁斯大学、亚利桑那大学和位于帕里尔的美国农业部农业研究服务处。 该项目成功地将排水处理过程与灌溉应用过程相结合，将提供一种创新的系统解决方案，以解决用盐水灌溉大田作物所造成的农业盐碱化问题的长期挑战。这一解决办法将通过使用盐水灌溉减缓土地生产力的下降，并保护土地不受长期积累的盐分的影响。SGS技术还可以通过应用海水和微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知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。