Plant factory into investment hot

Based on information technology, intelligent agriculture has solved the problem of less labor and realized the transformation and upgrading of the agricultural industry. The plant factory uses the computer to automatically control the environmental conditions such as temperature, humidity, light, carbon dioxide concentration and nutrient solution of the plant and realizes mass production of plants in a short period of time in a small space.

LED grow lights in the plant factory

A plant factory greenhouse that requires 10 people to manage, can harvest 1 million vegetables and sell one million USD a year. The plant factory first appeared in northern Europe, and there are currently more than 400 artificial plant factories in the world, half of which are in Japan. Located in Japan, a plant factory the plant is a closed-plan environment in a two-story building surrounded by vegetable greenhouses. The staff monitors the growth of vegetables through the computer management system. Vegetables take about 20 days from planting to seedling. The staff can monitor the temperature, humidity, and light of the greenhouse through displayers to realize remote operation.

In recent years, plant factories have become a popular target for global agricultural investment. One of the reasons for the increase in investment is the large-scale use of LED grow lights in plant factories. In the past, the electricity costs accounted for about 25% of the total costs of plant factories. In other words, the application of LED grow lights reduced the costs of investment and production. It is understood that, at present, agriculture LED lighting plant factories mainly produce various vegetables. Meanwhile, researchers are concerned about higher value-added medicines.

What is the basis for selecting the LED light bar of the lightbox?

There are many types of advertising light boxes, different light boxes are suitable for using places. Likewise, choosing LED light strips and design layout as the specific requirements of light boxes can make the perfect display effect without dark areas. In the following, according to different environments, we are going to recommend different LED strip lights.

The first is the outdoor advertising light boxes that commonly use in the bus stops, streets, and other public places. Since the water will damage the LED backlighting, the waterproof LED strips will be a better choice if the waterproof performance of the lightbox is not good enough. There are many types of waterproofing techniques such as IP65 glue waterproof, IP67 tube waterproof, and IP68 waterproof. After the waterproof process, LED lights have the excellent sealing performance to protect the internal components from rainwater.

There are also indoor light boxes in the indoor environment such as subway stations, shopping malls, exhibition halls. Due to the indoor lightboxes won't be damaged by the rain, It is more suitable to use the non-waterproof LED strip lights, which not only can save cost but also have a better heat dissipation condition.

Nowadays, the ultra-thin light boxes with a thickness of 3 to 10 cm are more and more popular. Obviously, in such a short distance between the backlights and cloth, traditional LED strips with a beam angle of 120 degrees cannot achieve the best lighting effect. Therefore, LED curtain strip lights with an emitted angle of 170 degrees were created. With the wide beam angle, LED curtain strips are able to achieve better lighting effect with lower quantity.

LED lighting vertical farm in the tunnel

In recent years, plant factories and vertical farms have gradually emerged everywhere, and the construction methods are varied, the vegetables can be grown on the ground, underground, in the air, at sea, and in containers. Recently, tunnel vertical farms have also appeared.

LED strip grow light

According to reports, an old tunnel in South Korea was transformed into a vertical farm, using LED grow lights to grow vegetables and fruits to solve the problems caused by extreme weather, shortage of agricultural land, and labor shortage.

An indoor agricultural company called leased a closed tunnel in South Korea and transformed it into a smart farm by using vertical stacking, using hydroponics and LED lighting to grow crops. According to the company, this is the world's first indoor vertical farm built in a tunnel and the largest vertical farm in Korea, covering an area of 2,300 square meters.

As global warming and agricultural labor continue to shrink, smart farms using LED lighting technology and systems have become potential solutions for sustainable food production.

How to ensure that the lenses work at the right temperature

As one of the most important parts of LED lights, LED lenses play a more and more important role in the LED lighting industry, which widely applicated in advertising lighting, office lighting, and home lighting. Relying on the reflecting lenses, LED curtain lattice strip lights have a wide beam angle up to 175 degrees, which fit well with thin light boxes, billboards, stretch ceilings and other backlighting. At present, most of the LED lenses in the market are made of PMMA or PC. Due to the temperature resistance of the materials is not high, so excessive heat will directly affect the performance of LED lenses. In this article, we will introduce how to reduce the impact of heat on the LED lens.

In the short-term use of LED lenses in the environment of overheating, color drift and light droop of LED light strips will have resulted. If working at such an environment for a long period of time, the light decay is accelerated and the life is shortened. In order to avoid the effects of overheating on the LED light fixtures, LED strip lights manufacturers often use passive and active cooling methods to dissipate heat.

Passive heat dissipation means that the heat is dissipated by the LED fixture itself. The most common passive heat sink for LED lattice curtain strips is the aluminum rigid PCB that has the excellent thermal conductivity, cooling the LED light source and LED lenses efficiently. Because the passive cooling system does not consume energy, it is the most energy-efficient and environmentally friendly. Our LED curtain light strips are adapt this type of cooling method i.e. high heat-conductive aluminum PCB to control the temperature in a really low range.

Active cooling is generally used on high-power LED lights that the lights themselves have no capacity to dissipate such a lot heat. The common active energy-consuming cooling devices are pumps and fans.

For more detail of LED curtain lattice lights, please visit our product presentation MFS3030A. MLDRLED, the professional LED light strips manufacturer in Shenzhen, China.

LED grow lights help Taiwan orchard save half of the electricity

Taiwan's Tainan City Agriculture Bureau has promoted the Dragon Fruit LED Light Lighting Subsidy Program. In addition to allowing farmers to respond to power saving policy, it can also adjust the excessive price drop of Dragon Fruit production. Xie Mingshu, head of the Piny Farm, who planted the dragon fruit, said that the farm replaced all the traditional bulbs with LED lights about four years ago, saving nearly 50% of the electricity cost every year compared with the past.

Xie Mingshu planted 15 hectares of dragon fruit. He said that before using traditional light bulbs, 2,500 bulbs were needed for 1 hectare. The monthly electricity bill was nearly 25,000 NTD. The orchard was completely replaced by LED grow lights 4 years ago. Nowadays, the monthly electricity costs are almost 10,000 NTD, which not only save a lot of costs but also more environmentally friendly. He said that this kind of LED grow light is actually a plant growth lighting lamp for outdoor use. It adopts the specific spectrum design to increase the flowering rate, and prolong the crop maturity time to avoid the production period and wind disaster.

The Agriculture Bureau pointed out that the planting area of Tainan dragon fruit from 321 hectares in 2015 to 356 hectares in 2017. This year, we tried to promote subsidies for purchasing LED grow lights and invited farmers to save energy and reduce carbon from agricultural lighting.

The Agriculture Bureau said that the planned funding is now 940,000 NTD. If the farmers replace more than 2,500 traditional energy-saving bulbs per hectare and change them to 12W (watts) or more, they will subsidize one-third of the purchases per hectare. Ten thousand yuan is the upper limit.

The Agriculture Bureau said that although the price of the LED grow lights are more expansive than the traditional lights, it can save farmers a lot of electricity bills in the long run.

How to choose the CCT of LED curtain strip lights

As one of the most popular LED backlighting LED curtain light strips have been widely used in supermarkets, subway and bus stations, and halls. With its high-quality light and wide beam angle, it makes ultra-thin lightboxes a reality and greatly improves the visual effect of advertising lightboxes and stretch ceiling.

The color temperature of the LED side-irradiated light bar is determined by the light source. In today's market, the light source used in the diffuse light bar are generally SMD 3030 and SMD 2835 LEDs. The common CCT are 3000K, 4000K, 6500K and 10000K. Different advertising designs are suitable for using LED light strips with different color temperature. After a comprehensive analysis of the illumination effects of the light bars of different color temperatures, we conclude that the light boxes with the light-color pattern are suitable for the high CCT light strips, such as MFS3030A-1. If the integral color of the pattern is dark, the white light strips will be a better choice. Selecting the product according to this method can make the pattern of the light boxes and the stretch ceilings more natural and clear. Of course, the actual situation is still based on the application places and the overall color. For example, if the main color of the pattern is white, it is recommended to use the 6500K light.

The above is the method of selecting the color temperature of the LED strip according to the patterns. If you have any questions and requirements, please feel free to contact us.

Waterproofing technology of LED light strips

Due to the market requirement for outdoor lightboxes, water-resistant LED backlighting happened. And then, because the widespread application and heavy demand,  a lot of LED light strips suppliers have entered this industry, and more and more types of waterproof LED strips have launched. Nowadays, there is two main waterproof technology in the industry: glue-filled waterproof and tube waterproof. The main features of the two LED waterproof technology are below.

The first is glue-filled waterproof technology that is a process that drops or pour the silicon glue on the surface of the LED light bar to withstand water. The process of glue waterproof is relatively more complex than tube waterproof process. One example is MFS3030WP IP65 waterproof LED strip lattice lights, in its waterproofing process, it has to be taken into account that the glue should not get to the surface of the light source LED or else, the light color of the LED will be changed. In addition, in case the glue through the gap to the bottom of the circuit board, the LED light bar will become a nonconforming product.

The other one, the tube waterproof process utilizes the glue tube to wrapping the LED light tape. Thanks to its leakproofness, the workers just need to seal the plugs at both ends of the light strip tube. The tube waterproof has higher IP rating, for its completely enclosed. Furthermore, the heat dissipation space in the tube is larger than the glue waterproof, and because the LED ribbon is entirely sealed by the tube, there is no possibility that the spilled water damage the LEDs. R2835TG silicon tube waterproof LED ribbon is an excellent example.

The above is the introduction of waterproof LED strips, if you need more detailed LED strip information or any have other questions, please contact MLDR Tech. Co., Ltd., a LED strip lights manufacturer in China.