Improvement of porous concrete for horticultural applications

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This research grant is focused on the testing and optimizing of porous concrete as an environmental control system for humidity and temperature control (HVAC control) and as a substrate for horticultural production. Porous concrete has the ability to be formed into almost any shape, making this construction material very attractive for numerous applications.A set of experiments in our laboratory have shown remarkable plant growth in comparison to prior porous concrete mixtures. We expect this research to allow for improved environmental control for greenhouse and controlled environment structures and will lead to other novel approaches using porous concrete for building environmental control and improved green wall methods to allow plant growth on almost any structure, specifically for greening cities. We have broken down this research into two main parts: 1) on the development and testing applications of porous concrete as an environmental control system and growth media and 2) improving the quality and stability of the porous concrete for plant growth and testing different methods. Our earlier research has shown improvements in the growth rates of radish. These positive results from the preliminary testing, in collaboration with our industry partners Innovertec and Cemex are providing support and direction for the expansion of this project. Innovertec is a start-up company building technology for green roof, greenwall and horticultural applications, while CEMEX is a world leading concrete and construction company. Our first step is to build on our earlier success growing plants on the porous concrete and develop this technology to provide a substrate for plant growth which can have application in agriculture, horticulture, architecture and in reclamation projects. We will develop the technology to use porous concrete for environmental control, develop greenwall technology, improve the quality and stability of the porous concrete for plant growth and perform field testing of the porous concrete under greenhouse conditions. **********