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Climate fans made in Italy – more precisely in Alto Adige – to protect football pitches: starting from the Mapei Stadium in Reggio Emilia, where they have been in operation since this summer, and from other Serie A stadiums, including that of Atalanta. The objective of Olympia – as the machine is called – is to always keep the competition and training fields in perfect condition.
The problem
Olympia acts on two fronts. In summer with a real water screen made up of water droplets that protects the football pitch from the sun’s rays, lowering its temperature. In the winter season, with the pitch heated, the breath of air sweeps away the dew drops from the leaf blades where microfungi potentially dangerous to the health of the grass nest.
The climate fans are made by Wlp, a company owned by Demaclenko and part of the South Tyrolean HTI group, and the response from the sports market is already positive. To guarantee playing fields that are always in excellent condition and performing well – this is the thesis behind the project – it is necessary to counteract the stress caused by increasingly extreme climates and intense competitive use. The presence of natural/synthetic hybrid carpets, in conjunction with the stagnation of humid air inside the stadium basin, means that in summer temperatures can reach well above 40°.
For this reason, technological research has recently concentrated on solving the problem which traditional irrigation systems, normally supplied within the playing field, are unable to cope with: indeed, the coarse drops of water during the irrigation cycles, under the sun, produce the classic lens effect and even end up increasing the soil temperature even further. Another aspect that has led to an acceleration in research is represented by Ultra HD, a technology applied to TVs that requires perfect, uniform images and strong color contrasts between the ball and the green of the turf.
The solution
Wlp technology, a specialist in machinery for the reduction of dust and odor emissions, has created, the first in Italy, an application capable of protecting greenery through the use of fans, borrowing the research developed for the ‘attenuation of noise in the field of technical snowmaking and then transferring it with the necessary functional modifications to the green world.