Airflow characteristics of attachment ventilation in a nursery pig house under heating mode

In the current energy saving context, it is important to study the airflow that regulates the environment of an animal-occupied zone (AOZ) and reduces the heating load of the barn in a nursery pig house. Forced convection heating regulates the overall thermal environment in a nursery barn using hot air while reducing the pollutant concentration. This improves air quality and has energy-saving attributes. In this study, we investigated a pen-attached ventilation (PAV) airflow system in a nursery pig house based on the hot air heating method during winter. The air distribution, temperature field diffusion characteristics, and ventilation effectiveness of the PAV were investigated using a full-scale test bench and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) during the heating mode. The results show that PAV can effectively deliver fresh air and heat to the lying area of nursery pigs, as well as reduce the vertical temperature stratification inside the pig house. In addition, the average tem-perature in the lying area increased by 3.77 degrees C, the energy utilization coefficient increased by 0.2, and the energy saving rate was 12.7% when compared to the mixing ventilation (MV) airflow regulation mode for the same heat input. The PAV airflow approach reduced the energy consumption in the operation stage of the barn and theoretically justified its application to the thermal regulation of the environment of nursery pigs. (c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of IAgrE. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ ).

Automated summary

In this study, the application of a pen-attached ventilation (PAV) airflow system in a nursery pig house was investigated to improve indoor air quality, reduce temperature stratification, and save energy.