Integration of agricultural spaces to buildings

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Assessing the energy performance of multi-usage buildings requires the development of new design approaches and operating strategies. As new building usages emerge, there is a need to study the design requirements and possible interactions with a variety of other building spaces. For instance, there is a rising interest to develop solutions to integrate agricultural spaces to buildings, either to improve the indoor environment or to provide locally grown food. In both cases, the complex interaction of plants with the building indoor environment is often neglected, but is important and influences the design and operation of buildings. To ensure proper integration of agricultural spaces to buildings the following objectives are proposed: (1) to model plants to estimate their impact on the building indoor environment, (2) to develop a methodology to size their heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) equipment, and (3) to evaluate the possible synergies of the agricultural spaces with the other building spaces (loads and HVAC systems). To estimate the impact of plants on the building indoor environment, available plant growth models will be evaluated and adapted for their integration to building performance simulation tools. The impact of plants on the indoor environment conditions (temperature, humidity, and CO2) will be assessed numerically for various cultivated densities and for different plant species. The estimated impact will also be verified using a controlled environment agriculture test bench and measured data from existing installations. For the development of a methodology to size the HVAC equipment, two different aspects will be addressed. The first is a detailed analysis of plant model parameters and their impact on sensible and latent loads and the second is the evaluation of different HVAC equipment to maintain the indoor environment conditions. Finally, the interaction of the integrated agricultural spaces with other building spaces (loads and HVAC systems) will be studied using building performance simulations. This will provide the basis for the design of more energy performant multi-usage buildings. The results will lead to a better understanding of the impacts of plants on buildings and provide new approaches for the design and sizing of the HVAC equipment required to maintain indoor conditions. It will also assess the impact of plants on the overall building energy performance and provide guidelines for their seamless integration.