Now THAT'S a power plant! Indoor farm grows 10,000 heads of lettuce a DAY using lights that mimic day and night

• The farm is nearly half the size of a football field (25,000 square feet)
• It opened earlier this month and is producing 10,000 heads of lettuce a day
• The farm uses 17,500 LED lights spread over 18 cultivation racks 
• Lights are used to mimic day and night for the lettuces
• The system grows lettuce two-and-a-half times faster than an outdoor farm
• It also cuts waste product by 40 per cent, and productivity per square foot is up 100-fold

Humans have spent the last 10,000 years mastering agriculture, but it just takes a dry spell, or a flash flood to wipe out a year's worth of crops. 

Hoping to solve this problem is plant physiologist Shigeharu Shimamura, who has set up an industrial-scale farm inside a factory in Japan.
Closely controlled using specially-designed LED lamps, the farm opened earlier this month and is already said to be producing 10,000 heads of lettuce a day. 

+4

The farm (pictured) is nearly half the size of a football field (25,000 square feet) and is built in Kashiwa, Chiba Prefecture, Japan. It uses 17,500 LED lights spread over 18 cultivation racks, reaching 16 levels high. These lights have been specially developed to mimic day and night

The farm is nearly half the size of a football field (25,000 square feet) and is built in a former Sony Corporation semiconductor factory in Kashiwa, Chiba Prefecture in Japan.

THE BENEFITS OF INDOOR FARMING

The farm uses 17,500 LED lights spread over 18 cultivation racks, and these lights are used to mimic day and night.
By monitoring the photosynthesis process carefully, the system grows lettuce two-and-a-half times faster than an outdoor farm.
It also cuts waste product by 40 per cent and productivity per square foot is up 100-fold.

The special LED fixtures were developed by GE and emit light at wavelengths optimal for plant growth. 
Purple lighting is used to mimic night, for example, while the white lights are adjusted slowly throughout the day to mimic a sun moving through the sky.
The environment is also monitored, including temperature, humidity and irrigation.
By doing so, the farm has cut its water usage to just 1 per cent of the amount needed by outdoor fields.

It farm uses 17,500 LED lights spread over 18 cultivation racks, reaching 16 levels high - and these lights are used to mimic day and night.

By monitoring the photosynthesis process carefully, the system grows lettuce two-and-a-half times faster than an outdoor farm.
It also cuts waste product by 40 per cent and productivity per square foot is up 100-fold.
'I knew how to grow good vegetables biologically and I wanted to integrate that knowledge with hardware to make things happen,’ Shimamura said.
He was inspired while working in Miyagi Prefecture in eastern Japan, which was badly hit by powerful earthquake and tsunamis in 2011.
This wiped out crops and led to food shortages.
The special LED fixtures in his farm were developed by GE and emit light at wavelengths optimal for plant growth. 

See the futuristic LED food farms in Japan to avoid disaster

+4

By monitoring the photosynthesis process carefully, the system grows lettuce two-and-a-half times faster than an outdoor farm. The Mirai farm opened earlier this month and is already producing 10,000 heads of lettuce (pictured) per day

+4

Purple lighting (pictured) is used to mimic night, while white lights are adjusted slowly throughout the day to mimic a sun moving through the sky. By achieving combination of photosynthesis during the day, and breathing at night, the firm can control the environment too. This cuts water usage to just 1 per cent of outdoor fields

COULD NASA FARM IN SPACE?

At nearly £14,000 ($23,000) to send a kilogram of food into space, cosmic cuisine doesn’t come cheap.
Nasa currently has plans for a 'space farm' and is already experimenting with growing lettuce on the ISS.
As well as cutting costs, Nasa is hoping a 'space farm' will deliver a lasting supply of food for astronauts on deep space missions.
It could also provide something called ‘horticultural therapy’ for astronauts to reduce stress, alleviate depression and improve their overall general health.
The work is part of the Vegetable Production System (Veggie) to grow six romaine lettuce plants under pink LED lamps.
Nasa claims that after extensive testing on plants on Earth, it doesn’t expect zero-gravity conditions to affect the growth of the plants.

Purple lighting is used to mimic night, for example, while the white lights are adjusted slowly throughout the day to mimic a sun moving through the sky.
‘What we need to do is not just setting up more days and nights,’ Shimamura continued.
‘We want to achieve the best combination of photosynthesis during the day and breathing at night by controlling the lighting and the environment.’
This includes controlling temperature, humidity and irrigation.
By doing so, the farm has also cut its water usage to just 1 per cent of the amount needed by outdoor fields.
Shimamura added that the systems allows him to grow lettuce full of vitamins and minerals.
Shimamura got the idea for his indoor farm as a teenager, when he visited a ‘vegetable factory’ at the Expo ’85 world’s fair in Tsukuba, Japan.
He went on to study plant physiology at the Tokyo University of Agriculture, and in 2004 started an indoor farming company called Mirai, which in Japanese means ‘future.’
The concept took off in 2011, when GE approached Shimamura with an idea for using advanced LED lights to illuminate the farm.

+4

The LEDs (pictured) last longer and consume 40 per cent less power than fluorescent lights. The company started testing the technology in March 2012 and came up with the final design a year later. Engineers designed the lights to be thin enough to fit inside the stacks

The LEDs last longer and consume 40 per cent less power than fluorescent lights. The companies started testing the technology in March 2012, and came up with the final design a year later.
GE engineers used proprietary technology to make the lights thin enough to fit inside the stacks, provide uniform light and endure the high humidity inside.
‘That way, we can put in more growing racks and increase productivity dramatically,’ said Tomoaki Kimura, country manager for GE Lighting Japan.
The GE Japan team believes that indoor farms like the one in the Miyagi Prefecture could be a key to solving food shortages in the world.
Mirai and GE are already working on ‘plant factories’ in Hong Kong and the Far East of Russia.

Source: Daily Mail, UK 

LED Light May Aid Skin

There was a time when no one thought about light bulbs — one blew, you screwed another one in.
Nowadays, it’s more complicated, as energy efficiency concerns have given rise to a slew of options, including incandescent, compact fluorescent lights, and light emitting diodes.
LEDs are getting more cost-efficient, and they are growing in popularity. With this increasing acceptance, concerns have arisen about long- or short-term direct skin exposure—especially since a 2012 SBU study found that contact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs can harm skin cells due to UV-light emittance.

A senior thesis by Stony Brook Univ. Chemical Engineering undergraduates has alleviated the concern. The findings were presented as a poster at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) conference.
“LEDs have the potential to be used for both indoor lighting applications and in wound healing therapy, taking the place of lasers,” says Tatsiana Mironava, a visiting assistant professor in the SBU Material Sciences and Engineering Department, and one of the students’ mentors. “We wanted to assess the effects of color changing light emitting diode bulb exposure on human dermal fibroblast cells.”
The team worked in the lab of Miriam Rafailovich, distinguished professor of Materials Science & Engineering in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Rafailovich was Principal Investigator on the project, and is one of SBU’s most experienced mentors. The students were Jason Caballes, Stephanie Falco and Emily Leonard.

“The team exposed fibroblast cultures to four LED wavelengths — red, green, blue and white — for intensity-normalized time periods, so all samples were being exposed to the same power within one test,” Rafailovich says. “The cells were counted using a hemocytometer; the mitochondrial activity was determined through MTS Assay analysis; and cell morphology was analyzed through confocal microscopy images. The cultures were exposed to two different conditions: longer exposure trials with Dulbecco’s Modified Eagle Medium [DMEM], with no phenol red on the samples, and trials without any media, a maximum exposure of three minutes.”

The short exposure samples without media displayed a trend of a higher cell proliferation than both controls (one sample stayed in the incubator; one sample was only exposed to ambient light). The long exposure samples that had one mL of DMEM media (maximum exposure time of 15 minutes) displayed no trend in growth for the LED exposed cells over the control samples.

“At this point, we have seen the consistent trend that LED exposure is not harmful to human dermal fibroblasts,” Leonard reports. That helps clarify the scientific thinking on the subject, according to Falco. “When we first started preliminary research for our paper, we ran into several conflicting opinions of whether or not LED lights were harmful,” she says. “Some people claimed that they did damage to skin cells, while others were using them to heal wounds, so it was gratifying to see for ourselves that cells were proliferating under the LEDs.”

Mironava confirms the students’ conclusions. “LEDs definitely don’t hurt dermal fibroblasts cells, and pose no risk at all,” she says. “In fact, in some cases we observed an increase in mitochondrial activity and cell proliferation, which indicates that exposure to LED light may be beneficial for the cells.”
The students are now investigating the influence of LED light exposure on factors affecting wound healing. They are thrilled to participate in research as undergraduates. “I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to experience the process of conducting research from the formulation of the thesis, as opposed to jumping onto a preexisting project,” says Leonard.

Adds Caballes, “It’s exciting to be working on developing a thesis and conducting an experiment as an undergraduate student. I have had very little exposure to cell biology laboratories before this research, and being able to expand my horizons through this study has been very fulfilling.”
Mentoring is equally gratifying. “I enjoy not only the science, but watching the students gain confidence,” Mironava says. “It is extremely important for students to have an experience of working in real lab, and I am sure it will help them to find a job in the future.”
The students, in turn, appreciated their mentors’ commitment. Falco speaks for all three, “Mironava sacrificed so much of her time to educate us on how to create a good experiment, and spent many days in lab with us showing us the ropes. She was understanding that we were beginners at this, yet stern enough to make sure that we always tried to improve every day, to ensure that we ended up with a great result to be proud of. Rafailovich has been fantastic: allowing us the use of lab space and offering her expertise whenever it was needed.”

Source: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com

LED Light Bulbs vs CFL Bulbs

You may not be able to see them, but LEDs are already all over your house - inside your flat-screen TV, alarm clocks, radios, flashlights and phones. LEDs, or light-emitting diodes, are relatively more energy efficient, brighter and longer-lasting than CFLs. LEDs are energy saving and are upto 85 percent more efficient than incandescent bulbs and 10 percent more efficient than CFLs. LED bulbs are also sturdier which makes them less likely to break as compared to other bulbs. CFLs and incandescent bulbs throw a lot of heat and consume way more electricity as compared to LED bulbs. CFLs also contain mercury which LEDs don't.

V-TAC LED Innovative Lighting offers you the widest range in LED Bulbs, whether it's Bayonet or Edision, Dimmable or Non-dimmable, White, Natural White or Warm White, 22 Watts or 3 Watts or somewhere in the middle, big variety like Globe Bulbs, Regular ones like Thermoplastic or Aluminium or sleeker ones like Candles, Epistar Chip or Samsung Chip, V-TAC has them all. 

V-TAC Innovative LED Lighting offers a wide variety of LED solutions for all your needs! Traders can get in touch and available special discounts by registering www.v-tac.co.uk.

Wonders of LED Lighting - Strawberries to be available all year round!

The light emitting diode (LED) are a type of solid-state lighting -- semiconductors that convert electricity into light. V-TAC LEDs use only 20%–25% of the energy and last up to 25 times longer than the traditional incandescent bulbs they replace, giving you 40,000 hours of lamp life! 

V-TAC LED bulbs are currently available in many varieties replacing 40W, 60W, and 75W traditional tungsten bulbs or CFLs. While LEDs were more expensive at the early stage, they are priced quiet competitively now and save money in the long run because they provide more than 25,000 lamp hours and have very low energy consumption. Although once known mainly for indicator and traffic lights, LEDs in white light 6000k, day light 4500k  and warm white 3000k for  general illumination applications are one of today's most energy-efficient and rapidly-developing technologies.

Today LEDs are used in very innovative ways. In fact, Experts have developed new LED lighting for greenhouses which can fool strawberry plants into thinking that it is spring rather than winter. British strawberries could soon be available all year round, thanks to the pioneering new technology which will help them grow out of season and help ripen up tonnes of fruit that normally would have been thrown away after the plants died back in autumn, saving more than millions of pounds!

The red and blue lights are low-energy, meaning they use less electricity than artificial white lights which are sometimes used by greenhouses. This means the strawberry plants can be kept in artificial light for a lower cost, according to researchers at Stockbridge Technology Centre in Selby, North Yorkshire.

V-TAC Innovative LED lighting offers a wide variety of LED solutions for all your needs! Traders can get in touch and available special discounts by registering www.v-tac.co.uk.