WelChic – Welfare Enhanced Living Conditions for healthier Chickens.

The overall aim of the project is to develop and test an efficient and environmentally-friendly, precision engineering solution for cooling/heating to improve indoor air quality and thermal comfort to promote better animal welfare and productivity in poultry houses. The system will use a novel membrane -based dew point evaporative technology using water and air as the working fluids to provide thermal regulation and improved air quality in the summer period. In addition, a low-cost poly heat exchanger ready loop integrated solar roof collector will be used to harness solar energy to heat wor king fluid to drive a heat pump. This is an efficient method for providing heating requirments in poultry houses. The solar collector has a simple design with direct integration in the poultry house roof. The project will involve the design, contruction and testing of a prototype cooling/heating system. The new system will provide an environmentally friendly and economic solution to compete with traditional HVAC systems.