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A new approach to measure air distribution through horticultural crop packages.

Vigneault C., de Castro L.R., Cortez L.A.B.

5th International Postharvest Symposium . Volume of Abstract . Verona, Italy 6-11 June 2004. page 16

2004

บทคัดย่อ

A new approach to measure air distribution through horticultural crop packages. The air flow distribution through a porous medium such as a mass of fruit or vegetable is of great challenge.The development of a method allowing the measurement of the air velocity or distribution would of great interest for the scientific milieu.Different possibilities of measuring air velocity inside a container during precooling were discussed.

The correlation between the cooling rate of produce simulators and the air approach velocity permitted to develop a new approach consisting of indirect measurement of air velocity.The produce simulators consisted of sixty-four thermo-instrumented spheres (balls) used to represent packed spherical horticultural produce during forced-air cooling.These simulators were strategically distributed in an orthogonal matrix along with 448 other plastic spheres.This matrix follows a column stacking pattern where the simulators were used to verify the homogeneity of cooling process.The specific heat capacity and a cooling rate index of each plastic spheres were measured.The cooling rates of the spheres were measured using still air and five approach velocities.A regression analysis demonstrated that 98.6% of the variation of the cooling rate of the spheres could be explained by the variation of the air approach velocity and their cooling rate index.The system was evaluated in terms of its capacity to determine the airflow pattern through the ball matrix.This system is an excellent tool to evaluate various force-air cooling parameters and the results may therefore be used to enhance the design of new packages used for handling transportation and processing of horticultural crops.