Illustration of the finishing building with all components highlighted.
air charac- teristics and
heat produced by pigs or equipment or
lost due to air renewal or through walls. Different modules
ThermiPig is organised in different modules that represent the finishing room in compartments dy- namically connected to each other. Information describing
room dimensions (height, ceiling area), floor type, wall insu- lation and number of places is gathered in the module “Room”. Installed equipment (fans, heaters, pad cooling, etc.) and their regulation rules are described in the module “Equipment”. The module “Management” allows description of maximal occupancy duration of fattening room, manage- ment of delivery to slaughter house, feed allowance and se- quence, nutritional characteristics of diets and pig character- istics. Once the modules have been populated, ThermiPig is used to simulate the ambient temperature each hour, depending on the growth stage of the pigs and the outdoor climate conditions. It is easy to demonstrate the great value of heat- ers when outdoor temperatures are very cold and pigs do not produce enough heat to balance the losses (typically at the start of growing period). ThermiPig can also evaluate pad cooling, especially under very hot outdoor conditions when pigs produce a lot of heat (typically at the end of the finishing period). Like any other decision-support tool of this type, the goal is not to predict exact pig performance (even if this ability has been verified using experimental data obtained in IFIP facili- ties). The aim is rather to be able to compare diverse combina- tions of equipment, feeding strategy and room characteristics.
The effect of indoor temperature Figure 1 and Table 1 illustrate how the indoor temperature changes during five days in the growing period, with seven different settings for the climate control box of fans, in
parallel with variations of outdoor temperature. For each set- ting, the average performance obtained by simulation on several batches of virtual pigs are compared: growth perfor- mance of pigs, margin over feed cost, nitrogen excretion, di- rect (electricity) and total energy consumption (including en- ergy due to total feed intake). The most interesting setting is selected based on a colour code as illustrated in Table 2. In the present case, the setting n°5 shows the best compromise on all criteria. This setting does not allow growth perfor-
Figure 1 - Changes in outdoor and indoor temperature with 7 settings of regulation rules for climate control box of fans (see below for settings details).
“1”
10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24
0 2 4 6 8
1332 1356 1380 1404 Day of fattening
Table 1 – Settings details belonging to Figure 1. Temperature setpoint
Rules 1-2 3-4 5
6-7
Initial 24 20 24 18
Final 17 17 22 15
Interval, days 77 77 15 77
▶ PIG PROGRESS | Volume 37, No. 2, 2021
Bandwidth, °C 6 or 10 6 or 10 6
6 or 10 53 1428 “2” “3” “4” “5” “6” “7” Out. T
–10 –8 –6 –4 –2 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24
1452
Indoor T, °C
ILLUSTRATION: IFIP
Outdoor T, °C
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