Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society ISSN:1598-6411(Print) 2508-3562(Online) 한국태양에너지학회 논문집

A vertical smart farm is a system in which multiple layers of shelves are installed indoors for crop cultivation; its purpose is to optimize crop production and management by adjusting the internal environment to meet crop growth conditions without temporal or spatial constraints. In vertical smart farms, conventional convection cooling systems are commonly applied; however, they often result in an uneven temperature distribution owing to the distance from the air outlets and the varying heights of the shelves. This imbalance can reduce the overall productivity of smart farms. Although lowering the velocity of the supplied air can create a more stable airflow distribution, temperature and airflow differences still occur horizontally and vertically owing to natural thermal stratification. In response, radiant cooling systems, which offer advantages in terms of temperature uniformity compared to that of convection cooling, can be considered. Instead of directly cooling the air, radiant cooling panels lower the indoor air temperature by exchanging heat through their surfaces, thereby effectively maintaining a uniform temperature distribution within the smart farm. Overall, this study proposes installation alternatives for radiant cooling panels to improve temperature uniformity in vertical smart farms and validates these alternatives through experimental verification.