Optimal Arrangement of the Dry-Heat Sterilizer in a Plant Factory

In this research, we propose a dry-heat sterilizer as substitute for the HEPA filter, which is the sterile filtration method of the conventional plant factory. It is important to determine the optimal placement in the dry-heat sterilizer for its practical use. There, in this research, we examined the evaluation methods aiming at the determination of the optimal placement of the dry-heat sterilizer in the chamber using a thermal flow simulation. We proposed the residence time and diffusive concentration as an evaluation index. As a result, it turned out that optimal placement can be determined by two indexes. Moreover, it was revealed that arrangement of the dry-heat sterilizer to near the wall of the opposite side of air-conditioning is an optimal placement of the dry-heat sterilizer.