Radiative cooling for storage of vegetables in the tropics

摘要

Radiative cooling in combination with packed bed cooling tower may be applicable in establishing low cost and environmentally friendly pre-cooling and temporary storage facility in vegetable growing areas in Indonesia. To test the possibility of such system, an experiment using a prototype storage system had been conducted in Candikuning village in Bali, Indonesia. From this test it was recorded that the attainable storage temperature was between 18 and 22 deg C. Under this environment tomatoes and potatoes, packed with stretch film could be stored respectively, for 16 days with weight loss of 1.7 percent and for 21 days with weight loss of 0.4 percent. After 4 days of storage, broccoli with 4 hours precooling, the recoorded minimum weight loss was 4.9 percent.