The Packaging Laboratory is equipped with state of the art facilities for static and dynamic testing of packaging materials and various types of containers. Various storage environments can be simulated in special chambers for conditioning the tested materials and containers.
Materials Laboratory
Water-Soil-Environment Laboratories
Irrigation and Spray Diagnostics Laboratories
Control and Automation Laboratory
Computer facilities
Ecological Garden
The Materials Laboratory offers teaching and research facilities for soil mechanics and physical properties of fruit and vegetables. The laboratory is equipped with a direct shear device, triaxle shear system, consolidation testing device, radioactivity instrument for measuring soil density and moisture content as well as other equipment to classify and sample soil. In addition, there is a universal loading machine (Instron) that can load up to five tons and a self-developed nondestructive measurement system for evaluating fruit and vegetable quality.
The division of water - soil - environment has several laboratories which serve both for teaching and research. The soil and water laboratory is equipped for basic training in soil science, soils physics and agrobiology. In addition, we have four laboratories for advanced research in: a. soil chemistry and soil micro-biology; b. soil physics; c. laboratory for environmental studies; and d. plant physiology and rhizosphere reactions. Each of the four advanced laboratories uses the basic equipment needed for its specific projects. All four share a central laboratory in which an ICP, an Autoanalyzer, an HPLC, and a Flame Photometer are operated. The ICP and Autoanalyzer were purchased with the help of the Technion Water Research Institute (WRI) and are opened for service to all members of the WRI. In addition to the laboratories, members of the group operate a glass house, a growth chamber and an area of open air lysimeters.
The irrigation and spray diagnostics laboratory is used for teaching and research of irrigation technology, liquid breakup, and atomization processes. Up-to-date irrigation equipment, including automation and control systems (e.g. the Motorola's remote control IRRINET system), monitoring, and data acquisition instrumentation, is being used by students and researchers. An on-line drop size and image analysis system which is based on a CCD camera, a stroboscope, and a PC based control and analysis software is used for spray analysis and development of new sprinkling and atomization systems. A Particle Image Velocimeter (PIV) was recently purchased with the support of the Technion Water Research Institute, the Israeli national Science Foundation, and the Technion.
Plant Physiology Laboratory
The laboratory is used for research into the mechanisms by which environmental variables (e.g. water, mineral nutrients, salt) affect the growth of agricultural crop-plants. Facilities include psychrometers and pressure bombs for water relation measurements; a custom built multichannel extensiometer for determining leaf growth and cell wall characteristics; and a walk-in controlled environmental chamber for plant growth.
Agricultural Meteorology and Greenhouse Laboratory
The Agromet Laboratory serves both teaching and research needs. A storage and preparation room is used to assemble, calibrate and test equipment before it is used outdoors, whether in students' labs or for research. Two 50 m2 greenhouses, located near the faculty building, are used mainly for research on the greenhouse climate. They are automatically monitored and controlled according to the needs of the various projects. An automatic meteorological station, located close to the greenhouses, supplies continuous meteorological data for all weather-related studies.
The laboratory is equipped with six workstations; two students to one workstation. Each workstation combines an analog "LEGO" style panel of electronic building blocks from which the students can wire-up systems and controllers that implement various transfer functions in real time. The analog panels are connected to personal computers via A/D and D/A converters, whereby students can program and implement digital controllers for systems implemented on the analog panels. The prevailing approach in teaching control laboratory exercises employs commercial kits which can demonstrate control of simple processes, such as temperature control in a thermal system, control of liquid level in a container, and pressure control in a pneumatic system.
The Faculty of Agricultural Engineering owns advanced computer clusters where students have access to 8 Silicon Graphics workstations, including two powerful 'Power Indigo2'. More than 20 PC's are used for Windows based applications and graphical terminals for the Silicon Graphics workstations. The cluster is mostly used by undergraduate and graduate students for CAD and analysis applications. In addition, 6 work stations (Indy R-5000, Sun-3/60, 4 Digital DEC 3000) and PC's are connected by Novel Network to serve the faculty members and research staff.
The Ecological Garden of the Technion was established in 1982 on an area of about 20 dunams. It serves as a field laboratory for teaching, research and demonstrations of the use of drought resistant and low-maintenance multibeneficial plants for erosion control and biological protection of denuded slopes and of waterways, as well as for landscape restoration and beautification. The central part, located on a restored chemical waste disposal site, is devoted to introduction of various plants, and the lower part, containing the Carmel natural vegetation, has been restored and enriched as a model of the ancient Carmel forest and agricultural landscapes. The ecological garden is used by students of Agricultural Engineering and the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning for teaching purposes. The Garden attracts visitors of the Technion as well as landscape architects, gardeners and school classes in these fields.
Environmental Exposure and Risk Assessment Laboratory
The environmental exposure and risk assessment laboratory in the Faculty of
Agricultural Engineering conducts experimental and theoretical research on
human exposure to hazardous matter. Research focuses on personal and
population exposure to airborne anthropogenic contaminants at the
microenvironmental scale, livestock-related emissions, exposure to persistent
residuals of agricultural spraying, and exposure in landfills and waste
management sites. Predictive tools developed for estimating the transport and
fate (penetration, deposition, and clearance) of inhalable agents along the
human respiratory tract applies to both deleterious pollutants and aerosolized
pharmaceutical products. The laboratory is in a process of acquiring a
complete system for particle generation and detection and portable equipment
for outdoors/on-site pollutant concentrations acquisition.