Comparison of Pre-Cooling Unit with Normal Refrigeration under Control Atmosphere Storage

Abstract

The availability of fresh vegetables in UAE especially in summer season has become a major issue as they are susceptible to post-harvest deterioration after harvest. Therefore, it is necessary to cool the product as quick as possible before it delivered to the customers. In present research work a comparison of pre-cooling unit with normal refrigeration was analyzed. The results revealed that for pre-cooling unit and normal refrigeration i.e. the average temperature ratio (TR_avg), cooling rate (CR) and mean half cooling time (Z) values were found to be (0.404, 0.221 ËšC/time and 55.21 minutes) and (0.556, 0.154 ËšC/time and 82.13 minutes) respectively. The curve produced strong relation between temperature ratio values (TR) and time in both cases i.e. pre-cooling and normal refrigeration having value of R² as 0.988 and R² as 0.978 respectively. Likewise, a linear regression was found between cooling rate values (CR) and time in both cases i.e. pre-cooling and normal refrigeration having value of R² as 0.9954 and R² as 0.9951 respectively. Furthermore, the study described that the pre-cooling unit saved 32.77% time to reduce the product temperature than normal refrigeration which is an ultimate gain.