Optimizing Forced-Air Evaporative Cooling Chambers for Vegetable Preservation

Abstract

Forced air evaporative cooling is an emerging approach to help with post-harvest fruit and vegetable storage and preservation. The rapid cooling of produce harvested has been shown to reduce food waste substantially making it a promising area for food waste reduction. This technology will be used by farmers who live in hot arid regions of the world with limited electricity access and would benefit from a cooling chamber that can run off minimal energy and will cool produce quickly. To advance understanding of the technology, a test chamber of the forced air evaporative cooler has been designed and built. This chamber will be used to test key design parameters to understand their impacts on the cooling performance and inform the design of full-scale chambers used to cool produce shortly after harvest. This thesis describes the rationale for the test chamber design as well as information on the application of the test chamber and the testing areas of interest.