Development of fruit simulators for postharvest cold chain optimization

摘要

Due to the high cost and variable nature of fruit, it is not easy to conduct commercial scaleexperiments for research. Replacing fruit with simulators/analogues could solve these issues. Tomimic fruit, a simulator must contain the same important properties so that the simulation isrepresentative of the fruit cooling condition (e.g. the heat transfer mechanisms involved in precoolingand storage).This study describes how a time-scaled heat transfer approach can be applied to fruit simulatordesign. The time-scaled approach hypothesis is that, if an object mimics the shape and thermalconductivity of the product, the cooling profile of the object can represent the product with scaledadjustment by the ratio of volumetric specific heat capacity. Experiments have been conducted. andthe results confirm the feasibility of the approach. This implies that experimental results can beobtained with a significant reduction in experimental time, if the time-scaled approach simulator isused.