A Novel Evaporative Cooling Technology for Mushroom Farming

Abstract

Mushroom cultivation in India growing gradually as an alternative source of income. The major problem faced by mushroom cultivator is maintaining specific environment (Relative humidity and temperature). Different verities of mushrooms required different environmental conditions. Hence, this project focuses on developing environmental conditions in small polyhouse to grow mushrooms throughout the year. The concept of evaporative cooling is utilized to maintain the approximate relative humidity 75% and temperature 25°C for oyster mushroom farming. Such conditions are developed by a novel design of evaporative cooler which is completely made up of clay material. As clay substance becomes more porous, the rate of evaporation rises. In this work, the porosity is enhanced by using pore forming agent (rice husk). The design consists of a cylindrical vessel, four nozzle and ventilation fan. The four nozzles are inserted in the cylindrical tank in the fashion of divergent to convergent. The water fills in the tank such a way that the outer layer of nozzle touches to the water. The air is flown from the lower section which comes out through the convergent part carrying higher relative humidity and lower temperature the air flow through nozzle will be humidified air. Three categories in mushroom (white, brown) are successfully grown with all the nutritional values intact in small polyhouse of 8*8*8 ft. This concept of micro environment can be carried forward for other categories of medicinal mushroom, plants ets. which required higher relative humidity & low temperature. By altering the design and tuning the parameters the relative humidity and temperature values can be maintained according to the type of crop to be grove by farmers.