Development of Heat Stress Forecasting System in Mechanically Ventilated Broiler House Using Dynamic Energy Simulation

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This study developed forecasting system that enables users to preemptively respond to heat stress evaluation of broiler before danger occurs. It conducted field experiments to show that the actual ventilation rate of the tunnel fan was reduced compared to the design ventilation rate and suggested to in-put the actual ventilation. Then, dynamic energy model that calculates the internal environment of the house was developed and the system was designed to provide information to users by turning it into a web service. Finally, Simulated temperature compared to actual temperature within an acceptable range and when the users input the farm location, structure and equipment, and breeding information, the heat stress index of the broilers of the previous day and the day before the forecast was calculated from the forecast time. Overall, the system is reasonable, and the research design and writing expression are clear. However, the discussion need be further improved. Detailed comments are below: 

（1） In Figure 13, the meanings represented by the two fan performance curves are not clear.

（2）In Table 4, the smaller the static pressure difference, the higher the reduction rate. It is suggested to explain it.       

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The submitted manuscript presents the development of a tool for helping farmers to forecast possible heat stress situations in broiler houses. The developed tool use EnergyPlus to perform dynamic simulations for estimating the indoor climate conditions of broiler houses whose main features are previously input. The results of the simulations are used to estimate the Thermal Humidity Index and, consequently, possible heat stress situations inside the broiler houses. A remarkable aspect of the proposed tool is that it could be integrated into the Institute Land Atmosphere Modelling Package.

 

The investigation proposed in this manuscript is worth of interest. Nevertheless, the publication of the manuscript should be reconsidered after major revisions by the Authors.

 

Here you can find some general comments:

 

This manuscript faces two main topics, namely energy simulation of livestock houses and heat stress assessment in livestock. Nevertheless, a solid background about these topics is not provided in the manuscript.

In sub-section 3.4, a small background about THI is provided but, in my opinion, a wider background should be provided in the introduction section with the aim of highlighting the novelty of this work. The introduction, in fact, explains quite well why the assessment of the heat stress is important but the current state of the art of technologies/tool for assessing the heat stress is not provided. Providing this state of the art, the reader could immediately understand the novelty of the proposed approach and its potentialities.

Regarding the second core topic (energy simulation), the Authors should provide the reader with a wider background about the energy simulation of livestock houses and if there are energy model that were used for assessing the heat stress. In this way, the Authors would have the opportunity to highlight even more the novelty of their approach. Moreover, they can clarify why they decided to use EnergyPlus for the simulation and not developing a model from the scratch, as done, for example by the same Authors in https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biosystemseng.2020.10.015.

 

Even though there is no limit of length, the submitted manuscript is quite long. To increasing the comprehensibility for the reader I suggest you shorten the manuscript by avoiding trivial parts, such as the ones between lines 674 and 679. The analyses of monitored data (sub-section 3.1) are interesting but also this part could be shortened since it is not the core of the work. Moreover, the variables defined in the equations must be defined in the text and in the nomenclature section. Some parts related to E+ are very related to the software structure. Maybe, they can be also shortened.

Finally, in the paper there are some typos, and the technical terminology has to be checked.

 

 

Here you can find more specific comments:

 

Line 25: “livestock breeding environment” is an uncommon expression in literature. Breeding is usually related to animal reproduction. Maybe, a more suitable expression could be “farming environment”. Please check and modify in all the manuscript.

Line 25-26: This sentence is misleading. Animal “thermal comfort” has been a central issue in livestock farming since years. Probably, it could be better to explain that its importance has increased in the last years.

Line 43: I agree in using the won, since the context in which was developed the analyses was South Korea. Nevertheless, I suggest you to put the values in usd in brackets for enhancing the comprehensibility of the manuscript.

Line 48: is that consumption referred to meat in general of to poultry? Please specify.

Line 50: please specify what area.

Line 52: The coma before “However” should be a full stop.

Lines 72-81: What is the source of the presented data? Please add the reference.

Line 96: What does “internal air environment” mean? Is this term used in scientific literature?

Line 123:  What “Complex ventilation” is?

Line 134: I suppose that CMH is m3 h-1. Please use that unit of measurement.

Line 144-146: This sentence is not clear. Please reformulate it.

Line 149-151: This sentence is not clear. What does it mean “Gt”? kWh m-2 a-1 is not the unit of measurement of degree hours. Moreover, degree days usually depend only on drybulb temperature. May you explain how wind direction and precipitation may affect degree hours?

Figure 4: The font size is very small and difficult to be read

Line 192 -193: This sentence is not clear. Please explain the concept in a better way.

Line 222-223: the amount of sensible and latent heat energy generated

Line 225: Which is the “energy balance equation” that is used? Is the Air Heat Balance (AHB) integrated in EnergyPlus?

Line 286: “of the fan and the static pressure”: The sentences would be more precise referring to the “static pressure difference upstream and downstream of the fan”

Line 291-308: this part is hard to understand if the variables of the equations are not declared in the text

Line 343: “fan total effticiency was entered as 0.9”: There is a typo (effTciciency). Moreover, it is not clear how the fan total efficiency affects the results of the calculations since no energy consumption is calculated. Please, explain.

Line 364: What does “T” mean in “150T”?

Line 372: Maybe a full stop is needed between “age” and “Pedersen”

Table 4: This table is very far from it is cited in the text.

Lines 543-544: Is this variation of relative humidity due to the air temperature variation?

Figure 10b: Please check if “Indoor Max” and “Indoor Min” in the legend are inverted.

Line 656: 10% respect to the maximum or mean value?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The Authors extensively addressed the comments and suggestions that were provided during the first round of revision. The manuscript could be accepted after the following minor revisions:

·       A good background about energy modelling of livestock houses and THI investigations is provided in the paper. Several lumped citations are used in those parts. My suggestion is to avoid the use of lumped citations. Instead, a short sentence that explains the contribution of the cited works could strengthen the work.

·       Line 245: “sensible and latent heat energy generated”: heat energy is redundant. Please, consider eliminating the word “energy”. This comment was present also in the previous review round, but my sentence was incomplete and unclear. I am sorry for the issue.

Author Response

Thank you for your detailed review and thoughtful comments. I have carefully checked your comments.

The contents of several citations were mentioned in the previously revised manuscript, but a short explanation was not provided for each citation. It was revised to show the differences in each literature, and then to present the differences in this study later. And the word 'energy' in the sentence that was the second comment was deleted.

I revised my paper following your comments, and And I'm sorry for editing the revised contents of the manuscript without the track change function last time.  Thank you very much.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx