Forced-convective cooling of citrus fruit: Package design

•Improved cooling performance was obtained with two new package designs.•Different package designs showed large differences in cooling heterogeneity.•Cooling rate was clearly dependent on the location of the container on the pallet.•CFD showed good agreement with experiments. Optimisation of package...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of food engineering 2013-09, Vol.118 (1), p.8-18
Main Authors: Defraeye, Thijs, Lambrecht, Rutger, Tsige, Alemayehu Ambaw, Delele, Mulugeta Admasu, Opara, Umezuruike Linus, Cronjé, Paul, Verboven, Pieter, Nicolai, Bart
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accuracy
air flow
chilling injury
Citrus fruit
citrus fruits
Computational fluid dynamics
Container
Containers
Cooling
fruit quality
fruits
heat transfer coefficient
Mathematical models
Orange
Packages
Packaging
Pallets
Precooling
Vent hole
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:•Improved cooling performance was obtained with two new package designs.•Different package designs showed large differences in cooling heterogeneity.•Cooling rate was clearly dependent on the location of the container on the pallet.•CFD showed good agreement with experiments. Optimisation of package design for citrus fruit is required to increase the throughput, by reducing the precooling time, and to enhance fruit quality by providing fast and uniform cooling without inducing chilling injury. The cooling performance of an existing container and of two new containers (Supervent and Ecopack), as stacked on a pallet, was evaluated experimentally and numerically with computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The accuracy of the CFD simulations was confirmed by a good agreement with experiments. The best cooling performance was found for Ecopack, but removing airflow short circuits in this container may enhance the cooling performance even more. Also with respect to uniformity of cooling of the fruit and the magnitude of the convective heat transfer coefficients, in a specific container and between different containers on the pallet, the Ecopack container performed best, followed by the Supervent and the standard container. The new container designs thus clearly showed significant improvements in cooling performance.
ISSN:0260-8774
1873-5770
DOI:10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2013.03.026