Vertical farms (VF) use some resources highly efficient, but the electricity use is considerable and they produce a significant amount of waste heat. The paper underlying this dataset investigates how the integration of vertical farms in buildings could reduce the use of energy, water, and nutrients collectively across both entities by leveraging potential resource synergies. The integration of vertical farms is considered in apartments, offices, restaurants, swimming pools, and supermarkets located in the Netherlands. The main focus of this research was to reuse the residual heat produced by the artificial lighting systems of the vertical farm within the host building’s heating system.
Therefore, the quantity of heat produced by the VF and temperatures had to be determined first. The current cooling and dehumidification system was studied. The total energy use of this system was calculated using mathematical simulations of the refrigerant cycle of the HP used, together with calculations for the used heat exchangers and mixing values. These calculations are described within the research paper, and results discussed. More detailed outcomes are presented in this dataset. The tab "VF_Ch" describes the energetic characteristics of the VF used to calculate the cooling demands. In the tab "VF_CDS" presents the calculations made to define the energy use of the cooling and dehumidification system of the VF.
Within the next step different strategies are developed that can supply the residual heat produced by the VF to the heating system of the different host building types. Three strategies were selected. Two for direct integration without seasonal energy storage (A1 and B1), and one using aquifer thermal energy storage (E2). Strategy A1 used a heat exchanger to supply the heat of the VF to the building, due to the low temperature this strategy was only applicable to swimming pools. Strategy B1 used a heat pump to upgrade the residual heat temperatures of the VF to that of the underfloor heating system of the host building. Strategy E2 used two HPs and an aquifer thermal energy storage (ATES) system to supply the VF heat to the building, and to store heat produced by the VF outside of the building's heating season for later usage during the heating season. More information on these three strategies is found in the paper. The performance calculations of these three strategies are found in tabs "Int_A1", "Int_B1" and "Int_E2", and are described in more detail in the paper and its appendixes. Within the paper, the performances of the three integration strategies were compared to those of an non-integrated VF and host building. The VF is scaled to provide all heat to the host-building typology under study. Within the non-integrated approach the energy use of the same size of VF using the non-integrated cooling and dehumidification system as calculated in Tab "VF_CDS", and that of the non-integrated/baseline host-building are summed. The different baseline host-building typologies use an air-source HP for heating and cooling. These calculations are presented in the tabs "BS_ap", "BS_off", "BS_res" and "BS_sw", for an 80m2 apartment with an energy performance label BENG (nearly energy neutral), A and C, for large and small offices with energy labels BENG, A, and C, for a 250m2 restaurant, and for an indoor and outdoor swimming pool respectively.