Better Housing for Effective Pig Production - Review -

Air quality in confinement pig houses is important to production and health. Mechanical ventilation and confinement is known to be the most practical tool for maintaining adequate air quality in pig houses through extensive researches since Millier (1950) invented the 'slotted inlet' ventilation system. A variety of mechanical ventilation systems have been applied to confined nursery pig houses in Korea without scientific verification of their ventilation effectiveness. Ventilation systems with three feasible combinations (NA, NB, and NC) of inlets and outlets in a confined nursery pig house were tested to evaluate their ventilation efficiency, of which the one with the performance was supposed to be taken as a standard ventilation system for nursery pig houses in Korea. Field data of air velocity and temperature fields, and ammonia concentration with three ventilation systems were taken and compared to determine the best system. The air velocity and temperature fields predicted by the PHOENICS computer program were also validated against the available experimental data to investigate the feasibility of computer simulation of air and temperature distribution with an acceptable accuracy in a confined house. NC system with duct-induced in-coming air, performed best among the three different ventilation systems, which created higher velocity field and evener distribution ($2.5m/s{\pm}0.3m/s$) over the space with a Reynolds number of $10^4$. The experimental data obtained also fitted well with the simulated values using the modified PHOENICS, which suggested a viable tool for the prediction of air and temperature field with given calculation geometries.