Using CFD to Optimize the Configuration of Negative Pressure Tunnel Ventilation Environment-Controlled Poultry House equipped with Cooling Pads in Taiwan

This study is conducted in the subtropical region of the Tropic of Cancer, where the climate is hot and humid all year round. However, laying hens are sensitive to heat and moisture, so it is hard to meet the requirements of the thermal comfort of laying hens in a laying hen house.

The reason why we choose the caged laying hen as a research object is laying hen spent about 1.5 years to produce eggs for humans, and the number of laying hens is large in the world due to the great demand, and the most prevalent way to raise laying hens is cage housing in Asia. The more advanced negative pressure tunnel ventilation environment-controlled poultry house equipped with cooling pads can adjust the ventilation system through sensors automatically.

There are a considerable number of studies on optimizing the layout of negative pressure tunnel ventilation environment-controlled poultry houses equipped with cooling pads, but most of them were conducted in regions other than subtropical areas. For the season that the climate in the subtropical area is special and very hot and humid, the same poultry house design operating in subtropical climate needs additional research and discussion, especially the effectiveness of cooling pads.

This study is devoted to using CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) to simulate the actual cooling effect of the negative pressure tunnel ventilation environment-controlled poultry house equipped with cooling pads in summer and further to find the most suitable indoor ventilation configuration, such as changing the installation position of the water curtains, the size and position of the fans and side windows, the depth of roof deflectors, and spacing of the roof deflectors, etc., to improve the comfort level of the chickens in the chicken house (uniformity of the wind field, temperature, relative humidity, carbon dioxide concentration, and ammonia gas concentration).

The contribution of this study is to provide existing or future chicken house configuration and ventilation equipment operation mode suggestions in a subtropical area in order to achieve a win-win situation of optimal egg production, economic benefits, and animal welfare of laying hens.