| Name: | Description: | Size: | Format: | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.77 MB | Adobe PDF |
Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Fruits and vegetables are perishable fresh products
that have a short shelf life. Post-harvest treatments intend to
slow down the physiological processes in fresh fruits and
vegetables such as respiration, senescence, and ripening. In
addition, those treatments also reduce the occurrence of
pathogen attacks and microbial contamination to increase the
shelf life of fresh fruits and vegetables. Refrigeration plays an
important role in food preservation, as low temperatures helps
in preventing or delaying microbial, physiological, and
chemical changes in food The food alveoli are used to protect
and prevent products to suffer from external damages while
their transportation in a package. This experiment was
developed to analyse the thermal response in two different
types of alveoli. The experiments were repeated for the 2
different alveoli and after that bags of phase change materials
(PCMs) were added in the packages and the thermal behaviour
of the packages with and without the PCM’s were compared.
Expanded polystyrene (EPS) balls are used as fruit simulators
in the alveoli. Paraffin wax RT11HC was used as PCM. The
aim of this experiment is to evaluate the heat transfer in the
different food alveoli made from carton and aluminum foil
material with respect to time. The test was performed by
lowering the temperature inside the cold chamber for 8 hours
Once the 8 hours passed the cooling period finishes and the
chamber is opened, exposing the packages and artificial fruits
to the environmental temperature in the laboratory for a
period of 15 hours. Results shown that in the cooling process,
aluminum foil alveoli have quick response in the heat transfer
to the fruit simulator and it took longer time in the heating
process with PCMs. Hence the PCM which stores cold thermal
energy is an effective method for cold storage food products in
a packaging.
Description
Keywords
Phase change materials Shelf Life Alveoli Thermal chamber Artificial Fruit simulators
Pedagogical Context
Citation
Publisher
Proceedings of the World Congress on Engineering 2021