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Completed TRL 3 (started at 2, targeting 3)
Higher plants can play a central role in bioregenerative life support systems to sustain a human presence in space. However, the growth and study of plants in space has been limited due to their high cost of maintenance. In particular, the electric lighting for a plant growth system accounts for 43-60% of its equivalent system mass (ESM). A large amount of power is required to provide photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) for the plants, but only a small fraction is used for photosynthesis. The rest is converted to heat which must be removed, leading to a cooling demand similar in magnitude as the power. Thus, the power and cooling requirements of the chamber are interconnected. Reducing the growth chamber power demand by more efficiently supplying PAR to the plant leaves has a compounding effect on ESM. To decrease the drastic impact of lighting on plant growth system ESM, the electric lighting efficiency and emission quality must be optimized. Over the last 10 years, LED efficiency has increased substantially. Although it will continue to increase in the coming years, the improvement will plateau. On the other hand, the quality of the emission is often overlooked. Once light is emitted, it either hits or misses the canopy. The fraction of incident to emitted photons is referred to as the canopy photon capture efficiency. I propose to boost the capture efficiency by leveraging low-angle emission LEDs and new plant imaging techniques in a closed-loop control system. The imaging techniques will supply a 3D reconstruction of the canopy to a control algorithm that will decide which LEDs to activate such that the plant receives an appropriate supply of PAR while wasted light is minimized.
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