Modern, energy-efficient greenhouses are widely built with glass with anti-reflective coatings or surface treatments to get more sunlight into the greenhouse and, thus, more solar energy. To remove uncertainty about how the greenhouse with special glass would perform in the longer term, research has been conducted on how AR glass can be safely cleaned.
The research, funded by Kennis in je Kas, is now complete. On Kas als Energiebron, Silke Hemming of WUR shares an update and the final research report. The project shows which cleaning agents are safe for AR glasses and which are effective against contamination by chemical dirt or microbiological dirt typically found on greenhouses.
An important conclusion is that all the investigated cleaning agents are safe to use on glass without AR treatment. This applies both to high-pressure cleaning on the inside and to cleaning with brushing on the outside. In practice, both chemical and also microbiological dirt occur on a greenhouse deck. None of the agents studied seems to be able to remove all the chemical dirt (e.g., salt, sand, rust) on all glasses: Virkon S and Menno ter Forte performed reasonably well on chemical soiling, XPG-CT1 was most effective on chemical soiling but had little effectiveness on microbiological soiling.
Read more at Kas als Energiebron here, including about the cleaning method.
