ORGANIC HYDROPONIC GREENHOUSE DESIGN
The Organic Hydroponic Greenhouse design is a new innovation different from standard greenhouse structures. Those structures normally use steel frames and plastic film liners at a cost of around $5 per square foot, or $250,000/acre just for the greenhouse alone with no bells or whistles. At this cost establishing acres of the Others standard greenhouse with water raceway tanks and floating trays etc, for the hydroponic system costs about $20 per square foot or around 1 million dollars per acre.
The FST design on the other hand, considered 10 to 50 acres as the future norm for the Commercial Aquafarm system, where a two million lbs., of fish production per year requires 10 to 12 acres of greenhouse hydroponic growing area to utilize the fish or shellfish waste. FST has reduced cost by eliminating the steel frame and structure to concentrate on the most important part of the greenhouse which is thermal insulation (resistance to heat loss) to allow winter growing. The polycarbonate panels targeted offer four (4) times greater insulation than standard plastic film typically used. The panel will be factory molded to FST patent, so their is minimum waste and will lock directly into the ground based raceway tanks.
The effective design cost for the greenhouse is $3 per square foot, or $130,000 per acre with minimum maintenance. The lined raceway tanks are designed 200 foot in length and 5 foot wide, with 20 inch high sides built insitu on the ground, plus the floating trays and recycle pumps is $4 per square foot, or $175,000 per acre. The total cost of the greenhouse and hydroponic system comes to $305,000 per acre. The nutrient rich temperature controlled water will vary according to the type of plant, algae, or seaweed growing. Vegetable plants will be loaded at one end of the 200 foot raceway tank into floating trays and harvested at the opposite end to provide efficient access for both loading and harvesting.
The FST design on the other hand, considered 10 to 50 acres as the future norm for the Commercial Aquafarm system, where a two million lbs., of fish production per year requires 10 to 12 acres of greenhouse hydroponic growing area to utilize the fish or shellfish waste. FST has reduced cost by eliminating the steel frame and structure to concentrate on the most important part of the greenhouse which is thermal insulation (resistance to heat loss) to allow winter growing. The polycarbonate panels targeted offer four (4) times greater insulation than standard plastic film typically used. The panel will be factory molded to FST patent, so their is minimum waste and will lock directly into the ground based raceway tanks.
The effective design cost for the greenhouse is $3 per square foot, or $130,000 per acre with minimum maintenance. The lined raceway tanks are designed 200 foot in length and 5 foot wide, with 20 inch high sides built insitu on the ground, plus the floating trays and recycle pumps is $4 per square foot, or $175,000 per acre. The total cost of the greenhouse and hydroponic system comes to $305,000 per acre. The nutrient rich temperature controlled water will vary according to the type of plant, algae, or seaweed growing. Vegetable plants will be loaded at one end of the 200 foot raceway tank into floating trays and harvested at the opposite end to provide efficient access for both loading and harvesting.
Cravo Retractable Roof Greenhouse System
Comparison Between Field Crop Growing and FST's Aquafarms
FST has compared the Community Aquafarm vegetable growing system of 1 acre compared to the Conventional Field Crop growing of 1 acre, using lettuce as the common crop. In the conventional field crop growing method, two crops are assumed harvested per year with an above average yield of 30,000 heads of lettuce per acre per harvest for a total of 60,000 heads of lettuce per acre per year.
In contrast with one acre of the Community Aquafarm vegetable growing system which is configured to allow the floating-grow-trays to hold 65,340 lettuce plants/acre, the patent pending flat tunnel greenhouse cover allows crops to be grown all-year-round with temperature and 24 hour lighting control for the nursery seed starts. The nursery produces 10 days old lettuce from seed, to replenish the floating-grow-trays in rotation after harvest. The 10 day old lettuce plants, require only 20 days more of natural sunlight until harvest. This allows for 18.25 crop rotations in 365 days (one year). At 65,340 heads of lettuce produced every 20 days, (65,340 x 18.25) a total yield of 1,192,455 heads of lettuce per acre per year is produced from the Commercial Aquafarm system.
This comparison of 60,000 heads of lettuce to 1,192,455 heads of lettuce is a factor of 20, or in other words the Commercial Aquafarm growing system produces 20 times more yield than conventional field crop farming. The hydroponic greenhouse system provides the optimum growing conditions 24/7 and 12 months of the year where the recycled nutrient rich water is temperature controlled to maximize plant growth. With these advantages the system can out produce field crop farming for the same area per year up to 20 times - effectively one acre of this system would produce as much as 20 acres of field crop farming.
In contrast with one acre of the Community Aquafarm vegetable growing system which is configured to allow the floating-grow-trays to hold 65,340 lettuce plants/acre, the patent pending flat tunnel greenhouse cover allows crops to be grown all-year-round with temperature and 24 hour lighting control for the nursery seed starts. The nursery produces 10 days old lettuce from seed, to replenish the floating-grow-trays in rotation after harvest. The 10 day old lettuce plants, require only 20 days more of natural sunlight until harvest. This allows for 18.25 crop rotations in 365 days (one year). At 65,340 heads of lettuce produced every 20 days, (65,340 x 18.25) a total yield of 1,192,455 heads of lettuce per acre per year is produced from the Commercial Aquafarm system.
This comparison of 60,000 heads of lettuce to 1,192,455 heads of lettuce is a factor of 20, or in other words the Commercial Aquafarm growing system produces 20 times more yield than conventional field crop farming. The hydroponic greenhouse system provides the optimum growing conditions 24/7 and 12 months of the year where the recycled nutrient rich water is temperature controlled to maximize plant growth. With these advantages the system can out produce field crop farming for the same area per year up to 20 times - effectively one acre of this system would produce as much as 20 acres of field crop farming.
Water Usage Comparison Between Field Crop Growing and FST's Community Aquafarm
The comparison of non-recoverable irrigation water use is also staggering, where the FST Aquafarm systems require 4 ounces per day per plant for 25 days (5 days water consumption in the nursery and 20 days in the sun) for a total of 100 ounces or 0.78 of a gallon of water per lettuce head by time of harvest. The conventional field crop of lettuce, planted at 30,000 heads per acre (43,560 square foot), or one lettuce head per 1.452 square foot of land surface area has nonrecoverable irrigation, requirement of 48 inches of depth over the lettuce seed to harvest growing time of 120 days. This total volume of water is calculated at 1.452 square foot per plant, times 48 inches or 4 foot depth to equal 5.808 cubic foot of water volume. If one cubic foot is 7.48 gallons then, 5.808 cubic foot is 43.45 gallons required to produce one lettuce head ready for harvest. Therefore, the conventional field grown lettuce requires a whopping 43.45 gallons to produce a single lettuce head, and is 55 times more wasteful compared with the FST Aquafarm system's grown lettuce that only requires 0.78 of a gallon prior to harvest. To fully appreciate the magnitude of the water waste, one must multiply the amount of water for one lettuce being 43.45 gallons, to the number of planted lettuce per acre which is 30,000 lettuce, which is a staggering 1,303,500 gallons of water to irrigate one acre crop of lettuce. The total volume of water used in the Community and Commercial Aquafarm systems to produce the same 30,000 heads of lettuce would require 0.78 gallons for each lettuce, a total of 23,400 gallons to produce 30,000 lettuce heads with hydroponics. FST has several additional options for those nonrecoverable irrigation crop farmers.