Ruchi and her team have really helped us monitor and develop the space which will enable us to eventually get the optimum growing environment.
- Richard Ballard, Co-Founder of Growing Underground
Growing Underground, which launched in 2015 and is located in former WW2 air-raid shelters, uses hydroponic systems to sustainably produce the pesticide-free crop. The tunnels are leased from Transport for London (TfL), which was happy to see them being put to work having laid dormant for 60 years.
The aim of Growing Underground is to bring edible crop production to the heart of the city while minimising the carbon impact of food transportation. The verdant trays of fennel, garlic chives, pea shoots and coriander, among others, can be picked and on a plate in a restaurant within hours. The forward-thinking company, which sells its greens through Ocado and Marks & Spencer and aims to be carbon neutral, has just been awarded the BBC Future Food Award.
Cambridge Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction (CSIC) Co-Investigator Dr Ruchi Choudhary, who leads the Energy Efficient Cities initiative (EECi) at the Department of Engineering, started working with Growing Underground in 2015, following an energy-optimising project completed for the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. This retrofit study of the greenhouses at Kew saw the development of a simulation model that incorporated the heat and mass transfer associated with plant transpiration into the dynamic energy simulation of the greenhouse structures.
“The idea was to expand the energy-optimisation project into urban farming and the collaboration with Growing Underground provided the ideal environment,” says Melanie Jans-Singh, an EECi PhD student investigating the integration of urban farming to cities reusing wasted resources. Rebecca Ward, a Research Associate at the EECi, who developed the greenhouse energy simulation at Kew, is also part of the team working with Growing Underground.
In March last year a range of instrumentation, including wireless sensors and web cams that monitor temperature, humidity, CO2, air velocity and light, was installed in a section of the tunnel that is currently being used for growing crops. More sensors were added this summer to help to maintain a constant tunnel temperature of between 20-25C. “There are big spatial variations of temperature in the tunnel but everywhere needs to have the same conditions,” explains Melanie, who has spent the past six months building and calibrating the sensors. “Most sensors need cables. Our sensors are wireless and are designed to cope with the humidity underground.”
Image: Micro greens and salad leaves
Credit: Growing Underground
Reproduced courtesy of University of Cambridge, Department of Engineering