Date of Award

2019

Degree Type

Capstone Project

First Advisor

Bahram Nassersharif

Abstract

Early in the Fall semester, JBE Industries presented one of their current challenges inside their facility. Their indoor cultivation facility has an issue with the control and mitigation of pests and diseases. The use of pesticides on medicinal plants is heavily regulated because these plants are mainly ingested through combustion, sublimation, and inhalation (smoking). Within JBE’s facility, they have implemented a CO2 fumigation system in the flower room to optimize pest mitigation and plant growth. Fumigation is classified as pumping gas (in this case CO2) into an enclosed volume at high concentrations for an extended period of time. JBE has challenged the engineering team to design a test box that will be able to hold test plants (clones) and fumigate said plants at different concentrations for specific set amounts of time. The purpose for this is to prove the hypothesis that the CO2 fumigation will be successful in fumigating the pests while not damaging the plant. Proving this on a small scale before the installation of a fumigation system at the JBE facility will decrease the risk of the hypothesis not being correct and therefore wasting excess money on the large scale fumigation system. In order to design the small scale fumigation device, the engineering team has utilized engineering techniques and analysis to determine a design that fulfills all the specifications required by JBE and even incorporates parameters that were not originally considered. A few things that must be taken into control when constructing this box other than CO2 concentration level include humidity, temperature, and pressure. The engineering team was successful in achieving the fumigation parameters JBE set forth, multiple CO2 tests took place during the spring semester in which the team was successful in reaching and maintaining the level of CO2 JBE desired. More detailed testing notes and matrices can be found under the testing section of this report. The engineering team is planning on doing a live fumigation test with plants and pests to prove the fumigation hypothesis. Within this report, the engineering teams research, analysis, design, and proof of concept (POC) are presented in a concise manner that encompasses all the work completed throughout the Fall 2018 and Spring 2019 semesters.

Comments

Sponsor: JBE Industries

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