Project Description:
Our team was tasked with creating a low-cost, low-maintenance heating system for a greenhouse used by Asawana Farms. Asawana Farms is a small farm in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, that grows exotic crops, specifically African crops that are required to be started in the wintertime to meet their needed growing season. Asawana thus needs a way to start the growing of plants in the harsh winter months of Maryland. They only have a small space in a shared greenhouse; they didn't want to spend a lot of money on electric or gas heaters, so a new method was needed. Our team came up with a thermal battery system that harvests energy from the sun during the day, when the temperature for the plants would be mostly sufficient for the plants due to the greenhouse effect. The thermal battery, which consists of a large mass of sand and a heating element, would release the heat to planter boxes at night, which have enough space to germinate the plants in the early winter months.
