Abstract:
Agriculture in arid areas is often limited by the scarcity of fresh water and increasing soil salinization problems. A saltwater greenhouse that uses salty water instead of fresh water is a promising solution for agriculture in such areas. When used in agriculture irrigation tail water processing, the salt-water greenhouse can be an effective tool for salt extraction which is an important means to mitigate the salinity accumulation problem. However, to optimize greenhouse production and energy efficiency, it is essential to incorporate smartness into the system using existing developments in AI/ML, big data, cloud/edge computing, etc. Therefore, developing a smart saltwater greenhouse leveraging these emerging, cutting edge and groundbreaking technologies becomes a center objective of today’s greenhouse development in general and saltwater greenhouse in particular. In this overview framework paper, we present a Digital Twin development framework for a smart saltwater greenhouse. First, the background of the saltwater greenhouse project is introduced together with the basic concept of smart systems and Digital Twins. The greenhouse control system is introduced with a Digital Twin in mind. We then propose the DT development framework dedicated to the saltwater greenhouse. A five-step DT development framework is reviewed and those new smartness features that could be enabled by using DT are also explained. Finally, we conclude the DT framework with some future research efforts. Copyright © 2023 by ASME.
