The reduction of waste coal has become a global environmental consensus, so more and more coal mines will be closed in the future. Scholars at the University of Nottingham are beginning to think about the future use of waste mines. They propose “vertical farms”. The concept is that mine is a ready-made greenhouse that can be turned into a fully functional farm with the addition of lighting and irrigation systems.
According to reports, scholars believe that deep farms have some obvious advantages: they are not affected by the weather, and the temperature of the ground floor does not change much, and expensive temperature control equipment is not needed. The Safa of the University of Nottingham. Saffa Riffat said: “Tunnels and shafts do not need heating equipment, and even if they do, they consume less electricity, so they are very attractive for food production. We designed a central shaft for mounting the robot arm. With these robotic arms to take care of the crops and harvest, the entire system costs only about $38,000 to build, and then the operating costs are lower. The LED lighting system we envision does not consume electricity.”
Scholars at the University of Nottingham invented the vertical farm, which only needed an intermediate shaft and installed a robotic arm to take care of the fruits and vegetables inside.
Vertical farms are suitable for short-growing vegetables and fruits such as spinach, kale, basil, mint, strawberries, mushrooms, carrots, eggplants, etc. Their trials show that a deep-deep small farm can produce 80 tons of crops per year. Moreover, production is not affected by the seasons and can reach 10 crop cycles per year, while British outdoor farms only have 4 to 6 times.
Researchers believe that the UK, with more than 150,000 abandoned coal mines, is a perfect starting point.