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MODEL TO PREDICT THE COOL‐DOWN CHARACTERISTICS OF VARIABLE AIR TEMPERATURE POTATO COLD STORAGE USING COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS
Author(s) -
CHOURASIA M.K.,
GOSWAMI T.K.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
journal of food process engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.507
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1745-4530
pISSN - 0145-8876
DOI - 10.1111/j.1745-4530.2006.00086.x
Subject(s) - moisture , relative humidity , environmental science , humidity , sensible heat , water content , product (mathematics) , air temperature , meteorology , mathematics , physics , engineering , geotechnical engineering , geometry
In Indian commercial potato cold storage facilities, the air temperature does not remain constant during the loading period. Also, because of stepwise loading pattern, the product loaded on different days would undergo different time‐temperature histories. Under this transient condition, the product takes longer to reach the steady state and loses more moisture of about 1.7% during 1 month of storage period. In addition, the sensible product‐cooling load is different for the product loaded on different days. In the present study, therefore, the product temperature, moisture loss and sensible product‐cooling load were predicted for the product loaded on different days under the condition of variable storage air temperature in the range of 3.5–10C and constant relative humidity of 90% using the computational fluid dynamics technique. It was found that the product loaded during the middle of loading period incurred more moisture loss than that loaded during early and latter stages of loading. However, the former case imposed more sensible product‐cooling load. The trends of temporal variation of average product temperature, moisture loss and sensible product‐cooling load depended on the day of loading of the product in the cold storage facility.