Minimierung von Hitzestress und Heizenergiebedarf in mechanisch belüfteten Mastgeflügelställen

Minimizing heat stress and energy demand for heating in mechanically ventilated poultry animal houses.

The indoor environmental conditions in mechanically ventilated animal houses have a fundamental impact on health and well-being of the kept animals. Apart from the need to sufficiently ventilate the animal house it is important to maintain an indoor air temperature which corresponds to animal growth, particularly at the beginning of the fattening period. Thus, in order to provide an appropriate climate within the animal house building insulation, ventilation system and heating system operation need to be integrated and optimized. Whilst dynamic-thermal simulation programs are increasingly used for the design of residential and office buildings, they are rarely used for the design of animal houses. This article illustrates the benefit using the dynamic-thermal simulation on the example of a mechanically ventilated poultry house. Three aspects are being discussed: (1) the challenges in modelling poultry houses opposed to modelling residential and office buildings; (2) the quality of simulated performance data compared to measured data and (3) the impact of the heat recovery system COP as well as heat transfer coefficients of roof and walls on energy demand for heating and overheating risk. The results show the dominating impact of the ventilation system operation on energy demand for heating and the benefit of a high thermal storage capacity of the walls to eliminate life-threatening heat stress for the poultry.