SBIR-STTR Award

Active ventilation is energy intensive demanding over twenty percent of a typical farm's electrical needs. Ventilation practices vary depending on the size of the building the specific livestock animals the layout of the building temperature humidity and more. Simple automated systems on larger farms have shown significant energy savings. However installation and maintenance of new systems is a significant cost to smaller farms. There is therefore a need for an affordable intelligent adaptable and retrofit table ventilation system 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 for health maintenance and other fields will develop the Complete Autonomous Ventilation Environment System (CAVES) for Small Farms an intelligent customizable scalable adaptable control 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 sulfide CO and CO2 -- and combine them with knowledge of the barn size and configuration and the number and type of livestock to reliably ensure proper ventilation at minimal power usage by controlling both fans and inlet configuration. CAVES will be able to be retrofitted to existing ventilation fans. Overall CAVES should reduce power demand by between 40 and 80 percent over standard ventilation operations offering a very quick ROI even on a small farm; this may also make powering the system via solar energy feasible.

Active ventilation is energy intensive demanding over twenty percent of a typical farm's electrical needs. Ventilation practices vary depending on the size of the building specific livestock animals layout of the building temperature humidity and more. Automated systems on larger farms have shown significant energy savings but installation and maintenance of new systems is a significant cost to smaller farms. This demonstrates a need for affordable intelligent adaptable retrofittable ventilation systems than can be tailored to the needs of small to mid-size farms. In Phase I International Electronic Machines Corp (IEM) demonstrated that the Complete Autonomous Ventilation Environment System (CAVES) for Small Farms was a feasible and practical solution to these challenges. CAVES is an intelligent customizable scalable adaptable control and ventilation system that monitors key parameters of barn environment - temperature humidity vapors/gases including ammonia hydrogen sulfide CO and CO2 -- and combines them with knowledge of barn size configuration and number and type of livestock to reliably ensure proper ventilation at minimal power usage by actively controlling ventilation fans. CAVES can be retrofitted to existing ventilation fans. Phase I work demonstrated that CAVES could reduce power demand by more than 80 percent over standard ventilation operations offering a very quick ROI even on a small farm. In Phase II IEM will first develop a sensor to verify the energy use and environmental conditions in small barns and using this data create a Phase II prototype of CAVES to demonstrate that CAVES is commercially viable as well as physically practical.