From Bioregenerative Life Support Systems for Space to Vertical Farming on Earth – The 100% Spin-off

Kurzfassung

In 2011, the Institute of Space Systems (Bremen) of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) launched a research initiative called EDEN - Evolution & Design of Environmentally-closed Nutrition-Sources. The group focuses on bioregenerative life support systems, especially greenhouse modules and technologies for planetary habitats on Moon/Mars. One focal point is set on Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) technologies and the transformation and integration of these technologies into space-proven hardware solutions. In addition to that, the EDEN-Team aims to apply its know-how of CEA technologies in space systems to provide valuable spin-off projects on Earth. For that purpose the first engineering study of a semi closed-loop Vertical Farm (VF) to assess its economic feasibility was done by the group through a Concurrent Engineering (CE) process. Vertical Farming is an advanced method of agriculture on Earth, where commercially viable crops are cultivated inside multi-story buildings that mimic several aspects of an ecological system. Vertical Farms are posited as a potential solution regarding the global food demand on Earth by allowing increased crop growth in areas, where traditional agriculture is not or only partially possible. Especially for so called mega-cities like Tokyo, New York or Beijing this concept is a matter of debate in the scientific community in the context of “Urban Agriculture”. Aside from that there are some additional benefits of a VF like year-round crop production (even during winter- & dry summer periods), faster production and higher crop yields due to CEA technologies or no weather related crop failures due to hail and heavy rain storms. Moreover a VF provides a close by consumer crop production. Thus there is no spoilage of crops during transportation (fresh food). The conceptualized Vertical Farm of DLR is a building with 37 floors, a square footprint of 44 by 44 meters and a total height of 168 meters (while 5 floors are beneath ground level). There are 25 plant cultivation floors in the building with multiple stacked plant growth layers on every floor. A total edible biomass output of around 13,3 tons/day (~4.900 tons/year) can be achieved with a total grow area of ca. 93.000 m2. Aside from plant cultivation, three fish farming floors are dedicated to the cultivation of Tilapia fish. A total of roughly 280 kg of Tilapia filet can be produced per day (~100 tons/year). Water is recycled using filtration and recovery systems. The bio waste resulting from the plant cultivation- and fish farming processes is used for power- & heat generation, as fish feed supplement and to generate new bio fertilizer. The authors present the technical design and economic analysis of the Vertical Farm based on their know-how of Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) technologies in space systems. Furthermore advantages and challenges of such a farm together with a comparison to traditional agriculture will be outlined. The VF is a perfect example of transforming know-how, generated in the space sector, into terrestrial applications.