Cooling of Fresh Vegetable Farm Produce: Experimental and Numerical Studies

Following harvest, fresh produce needs to be cooled immediately in a room where the air temperature and the relative air humidity are controlled to maintain the produce quality. In this paper, an experimental study for forced air cooling of fresh produce (cauliflower) is performed using a pilot developed within our laboratory. Furthermore, a numerical simulation of spherical produces, taking into account the aerodynamic aspect and also the heat transfer in the produce and in the air, was carried out using a finite element method. At the end of this communication, experimental results are presented and compared with the simulation. Keywords—Cauliflower, Forced air cooling, Heat transfer, Numerical model, Tunnel of air.