Types of humidifiers and humidification methods for mushroom growers - Mushroom Cultivation System, Hydroponic System, Greenhouse System

Types of humidifiers and humidification methods for mushroom growers

In the artificial cultivation technology of edible mushrooms, the optimum humidity maintenance method for mushroom growth is to keep the humidity in the air high to prevent drying on the mushroom surface. Mushrooms may need to maintain high humidity depending on the variety, but there are cases where mushrooms develop in the medium like shiitake and need to maintain low humidity during growth, so not all mushrooms need to maintain high humidity.

For oyster mushrooms, enoki mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, and oyster mushrooms, the optimum humidity during the growth process should be 85% or more, and the appropriate humidity for shiitake mushrooms and shiitake mushrooms should be maintained at 60-70% to harvest bright, high-quality mushrooms with low moisture content.

Because of this, shiitake mushrooms have many difficulties in cultivation in areas with high temperature and humidity. In Korea, it is relatively easy to cultivate in spring, autumn and winter. This is highly traded, and many farms are cultivating them with air-conditioning facilities. However, the quality of mushrooms is not as good as in spring and autumn.

This is because mushrooms grow into water mushrooms due to high humidity in summer. These water mushrooms have a short shelf life, and when exposed to room temperature, the caps quickly soften and turn black, resulting in poor marketability.

For this reason, the key to cultivating shiitake mushrooms in the summer is humidity control within the growing house after maintaining the proper temperature.

This chapter is about humidification, so if you are curious about dehumidification, please refer to the following.

Effective humidification method for mushroom cultivation

In general, the most effective humidification method is to boil water with electricity or oil, evaporate it into steam, and immediately penetrate into the air.

– The initial investment cost is high and the facility is complicated → A steam boiler and piping facilities are required for steam generation, and it is not suitable to install a small electric steam generator in the grower.

– Steam generated by the heating process at 100℃ has high energy itself, so it is not suitable because it increases the cooling load in the cultivation house in summer.

– It is unreasonable due to maintenance cost due to malfunction such as heating heater and automatic control.

For this reason, if water is finely divided and sprayed into the air as a reasonable humidification method for growers, the humidification method that absorbs energy in the air and generates it in the form of evaporative water vapor is absorbed into the air is a reasonable humidification method.

These water injection methods are divided into high-pressure viscose nozzle injection type, centrifugal separation injection type, that is, centrifugal atomization type, and ultrasonic method. Because of the small amount of humidification, large-capacity humidification is impossible, and the centrifugal atomization method is mainly used rather than the humidification method of the two due to the occurrence of contamination.

First of all, if the humidification method is first described for the centrifugal atomization method, which is the most preferred humidification method by mushroom growers, the rotating disk is rotated at 3000rpm or more, and the water supplied to the center of the disk is pushed out by centrifugal force and is in the form of fine particles by the guide plate. It is a method of humidifying by pushing it out with a sieve, and the humidification amount is 15kg/hr, and it is suitable for humidification of a large area such as a mushroom grower.

Huge damage due to air conditioner failure

Although there are some differences, mushroom bacteria are often killed or seriously damaged when exposed to high temperature and room temperature.

In the case of mushroom growers, when the air conditioner fails in summer, the room temperature rises rapidly within a few hours. In this process, the room temperature rise due to the inflow of high-temperature outdoor air is unavoidable, and the rate of increase in the indoor temperature rises sharply faster than the rate of rise in other buildings, such as the rise in temperature due to respiration heat generated during the respiration process and heat loss in buildings due to the difference between indoor and outdoor temperatures.

For this reason, the breakdown of air conditioning equipment in summer often leads to serious property damage.

냉방설비의 고장전 사전진단기능

여름철 고온기에 냉방설비의 고장은 위에서 말했듯이 심각한 상황으로 고장나지 않도록 관리하는 것이 무엇보다 중요하다.
보통 냉난방시설이 많은 대규모 재배사의 경우 별도의 전문관리인을 두거나 외부전문업체에 용역계약으로 관리하기도 하나 사내 전문관리인의 경우 기술력이 부족할 뿐만 아니라 여타다른업무를 병행하는경우가많아 전혀 전문적이지 못하고 외부용역업체 또한 형식적으로 시간만 채우는 경우가 많아 실효적이지 못하다.

이에 당사 특허 등록한 기술을(특허명: 식물재배공조시설) 스마트팜 통신기술과 접목하여 재배사의 복합환경제어기와 재배사별 설치한 다수의 냉동시스템을 하나로 통합관리하는 시스템으로 실외기내부에 장착한 감시용컴퓨터로 작은 냉동시스템 주요회로에 설치한 각종센서의 운전자료에 의하여 고장 전 장비내부의 이상징후를 사전 파악하여 해당 내용을 설비 관리자에게 통보하는 기능으로 관리자는 이러한 내용을 토대로 자체조치 내지는 전문가와 상담 조치함으로 고장을 미연에 방지하는 기술이다.

System configuration to improve humidification efficiency

Since the droplets sprayed by the humidifier are not in the state of water vapor, they cannot be diluted in the air. These droplets absorb energy from the air and are separated into water vapor, molecular unit of 0.38 nm or less, and the humidification is completed only after absorption into the air. For this reason, the humidifier is placed in front of the evaporator of the indoor unit for heating and cooling, so that the spray water from the humidifier is diluted with the blowing air of the cooler, and the cooler fan is automatically controlled to operate in conjunction with the humidifier. In this case, as a large amount of blown air and humidifier spray water are diluted, heat exchange between fine spray water and air is actively performed, which doubles the evaporation effect of spray water, enabling uniform humidification throughout the cultivation area in a short time.