Thursday 16th September, 2021: Supervisor Critiques

 Critiques for proposal form from Ms. Bharat are highlighted in red below.  

RATIONALE:

 Trinidad and Tobago, for its size has a high population density and is quickly rising. Trinidad’s soil type is typically sandy or clay like. These are not good conditions for farming. As a result, farmers in Trinidad undergo laborious and expensive farming practices to improve these conditions by investing in manure, tilling, ploughing, fertilizing and pesticide uses. This style of farming demands long tedious hours in the field. Growing food hydroponically can simplify this process significantly. Hydroponics uses no soil. Weeding out unwanted plants is no longer an issue. Hydroponics can be grown indoors so no fertilizers is needed because there are no pests in the soil. Many seedlings planted in soil die due to pests, intense heat, poor soil conditions. Hydroponics yield and quality is much greater than soil and uses about 99% less water. Apartment buildings /townhouses are becoming a new trend in Trinidad. Many residents have no access to land at all. Hydroponics allows anyone to grow their own food even if their soil type is concrete!  (I like your creativity but for reports use factual statements..concrete is not a soiltype so say even if there is no soil but only concrete) This project should help answer some questions between horizontal and vertical hydroponic systems. •Which will grow faster? •   Which would have a greater yield? •Would the quality be any different? •Which is better suited for urban versus suburban residents? •Should farmers switch from soil farming to hydroponic farming?  Your rationale is to help improve hydroponics systems by determining which system is more productive within a given space. We are not interested un switching from soil to hydro in this project.

 

OBJECTIVES:  

    (1)      to design, construct and test horizontal and vertical hydroponics plant growth systems

     (2)      to compare the economic production quality and efficiency of horizontal and vertical hydroponics system.

                             

 

PROJECT SCOPE: 

This project entails the design, construction and testing of horizontal and vertical hydroponic plant growth systems in a controlled environment. For testing purposes, the hydroponic systems would be built in a controla controlled environment may be expensive at this point so we may have to test under open field but this is fine once both systems are under the same conditions room indoors, to monitor temperature, light exposure, growth rate and protection against pests. An artificial lighting system would be installed on the ceiling as an alternative to sunlight. Since both systems are being tested, for maximum light exposure efficiency the walls of the room would be wrapped with reflective material.  The horizontal and vertical systems would be logged against each other daily measuring root and leaf distribution and weight of plants. Quality may be subjective, visual inspection and taste will be recorded at harvest time. 

 

ENGINEERING PRINCIPLES/ TOOLS TO BE APPLIED

Workshop technology, Irrigation, SolidWorks and mechanical drawing, Machine Design (design process), Fluid Mechanics, Thermodynamics, Elements of Food Engineering, Soil and Water Engineering and   Engineering Mathematics for calculations.

 


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