SBIR/STTR Award attributes
Active ventilation is energy intensive demanding over twenty percent of a typical farm's electricalneeds. Ventilation practices vary depending on the size of the building the specific livestockanimals the layout of the building temperature humidity and more. Simple automated systems onlarger farms have shown significant energy savings. However installation and maintenance of newsystems is a significant cost to smaller farms.There is therefore a need for an affordable intelligent adaptable and retrofittable ventilationsystem than can be tailored to the needs of small to mid-size farms.International Electronic Machines Corp. a leader in the field of smart sensors and controls forhealth maintenance and other fields will develop the Complete Autonomous VentilationEnvironment System (CAVES) for Small Farms an intelligent customizable scalable adaptablecontrol and ventilation system that will directly monitor all the key parameters of barn environment- temperature humidity fan speed/wind velocity vapors/gases such as ammonia hydrogen sulfideCO and CO2 -- and combine them with knowledge of the barn size and configuration and thenumber and type of livestock to reliably ensure proper ventilation at minimal power usage bycontrolling both fans and inlet configuration. CAVES will be able to be retrofitted to existingventilation fans. Overall CAVES should reduce power demand by between 40 and 80 percent overstandard ventilation operations offering a very quick ROI even on a small farm; this may alsomake powering the system via solar energy feasible.
