Overview
The MTPC Vitality chamber is the second of a two part custom solution designed for Nunhems, a global specialist in vegetable genetics. It is designed to support early growth of young plants germinated from experimental seed so as to determine its viability. Based on Conviron’s successful MTPC platform, the chamber provides LED lighting, additive humidity control, and five tiers of growth area with horizontal airflow delivered from the rear of each shelving bank. Once installed, the chamber will be equipped with a custom cantilevered multi-tier cart system developed by Nunhems. This cart system will circulate experimental material throughout the growth environment, further leveraging the already excellent performance of the chamber and exposing plants to the most uniform growth conditions possible.
Collaboration
As with all custom projects, Conviron maintained a close relationship with the client throughout the product development phase in order to ensure that all specific needs were accounted for. This culminated in witness testing, which is a feature of Conviron’s overall product delivery strategy. It gave representatives from Nunhems the opportunity to personally evaluate the chamber while in operation at Conviron’s test facility.
Solution
Development of the custom Vitality chamber began with Conviron’s established MTPC walk-in platform. Utilizing a cantilevered multi-tier shelf design, the standard MTPC provides maximum open space in and around the shelving area to accommodate both experimental material and unrestricted movement of multi-tier carts on which that material is supported. Additional volume was included on either end of both banks of shelving to allow room for the carts to fully circulate the chamber in a continuous loop.
Conviron was able to further leverage the efficiency of the standard MTPC design by adding two additional tiers of growth area. This maximizes the amount of experimental material that can be processed at any point in time, increasing the statistical relevance of experimental data.
The standard lighting system offered in the MTPC is a combination of fluorescent and incandescent lamps, however, each tier in the custom Vitality chamber is equipped with Philips LED light bars. These were requested by Nunhems after experimental results showed improved performance over fluorescent and incandescent lighting. This combined with inherent substantial energy savings made LED lighting an ideal choice.
The result is a unique energy efficient multi-tier growth chamber which evolved through a collaborative partnership. The MTPC Vitality chamber is further example of how Conviron combines established technology with innovative adaptation to create solutions specifically tailored to the needs of its clients.
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