| Solar thermal energy has been widely employed by the agro food industry with the objectives of reducing conventional sources of energy and achieving a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. The focus of this manuscript is to evaluate a medium scale commercial incubator (for 9072 red-legged partridge eggs) supported with solar thermal energy under detailed monitoring. In this sense, an evacuated solar collector with an absorbing area of 0.99 m2 and 163 L of water accumulation (with an auxiliary 80-L water tank) was coupled to the original emergency cooling system of the incubator. The hybrid system, using an automated control system, shows higher thermal stability (std=0.12ºC) than the standard control system of the incubator (std=0.18ºC). The area of the... |
