Plant husbandry – Water culture – apparatus or method – Nutrient recirculation system
Reexamination Certificate
1998-08-06
2001-11-13
Ark, Darren W. (Department: 3643)
Plant husbandry
Water culture, apparatus or method
Nutrient recirculation system
C047S05900R, C047S017000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06314675
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to an air culture system on fixed or movable trays, having a management system (comprising a central logic unit and one or more peripheral logic units disposed in the greenhouses used for the air culture) which allows to grow plants to be cultivated (such as, for example, flowers, vegetables, ornamental plants and/or half standard fruit trees; hereinafter referred to as “plants”) in conditions which should be as similar as possible to the ideal ones. Each greenhouse is managed by at least one peripheral logic unit which controls and adjusts a plurality of parameters (temperature inside the greenhouse, physical and chemical characteristics of the nutritive solution, etc.), keeping them as near as possible to the reference values recorded in the peripheral logic unit, values which correspond to the best vegetative conditions for the plants disposed on trays inside the greenhouse governed by the peripheral logic unit.
The central unit allows an operator to control and manage the working of the management system, by modifying the reference values recorded in each peripheral logic unit: moreover, the central unit gathers and processes for informative and statistic purposes the values of the above-mentioned parameters detected (and, if it's the case, previously processed) by the peripheral logic units.
PRIOR ART
An air culture system comprises a plurality of trays (which can be fixed or movable) disposed inside one or more greenhouses: plants are held and sustained by support means which are parts of the trays so that their roots, jutting out of the support means, are free “in the air” inside the tray; to supply plants with water and nutritive elements necessary to their growth, roots are sprinkled with a nutritive solution coming from one or more containers, such solution being periodically sprinkled in the area of the tray underneath the support means of the plants, by means of pipes having nozzles (or other similar means) disposed on the bottom of the tray.
Known air culture systems often present high overheads and operating costs which are (or might be) due to the fact that the prototype state has not (very often) been overcome and/or to the fact that complicated and expensive engineering solutions have been used, unjustified by the possible gains obtained.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,965,962 (D1) discloses an hydroponic culture system positioned inside a greenhouse and comprising a management system, a plurality of sets of angled panels (supporting the grown plants) movable along the floor of the greenhouse and hydroponic solution spraying means, where the management system comprises a control unit which is able to control and adjust at a given value the CO
2
concentration.
WO-A-95 08260 (D2) discloses an hydroponic control apparatus managed by a logic unit which controls at least one peripheral device, positioned inside a greenhouse, which includes sensors for controlling a plurality of parameters and means for power supply control switches: the peripheral devices do not include a logic unit and the signals emitted by the sensors belonging to a peripheral device are directly sent to the logic unit which, in response to the received signals, operates the control switches belonging to the same peripheral device. U.S. Pat. No. 4,869,019 (D3) discloses a self-contained tray for aeroponics including a tank, a closed structure and individual means for circulating a nutritive solution inside the closed structure, said closed structures in turn comprising a front panel (sustaining the plants grown on the tray) , side panels and a back panel: the lower edges of the closed structure are secured by screws in watertight and light-tight manner in rabbets positioned at upper ends of the tank. The present invention relates to an air culture system, which can be made on an industrial scale, comprising modular trays and a management system which makes it possible to use the system to grow plants in the best manner under any environmental condition, by avoiding and/or eliminating the above-mentioned limits and /or defects concerning the known air culture systems; such a management system allows to obtain particularly advantageous results if the nutritive solution, which has a novel and original formulation and is disclosed herein, is used.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to an air culture system (made of a plurality of trays disposed inside one or more greenhouses) comprising a management system comprising a central logic unit and at least one peripheral logic unit, disposed inside a greenhouse, which manages the greenhouse by controlling and adjusting at given values a plurality of parameters (modifiable by the central unit) to obtain the best vegetative conditions for the plants grown inside the greenhouse. Moreover, the central unit gathers and processes for informative and statistic purposes the values of the above-mentioned parameters, detected from the peripheral logic units.
The parameters controlled and adjusted at given values by a peripheral logic unit comprise the period and the duration of plant sprinkling with a nutritive solution, the pH value and the conductivity of the nutritive solution and the concentration of the nutritive elements in the nutritive solution.
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Ark Darren W.
Hedman & Costigan ,P.C.
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