Objective:
To provide a cooling solution to the food processing industry for their perishable products in transit. The Customer has developed a thermal management system (TMS) box which is intended to store vegetables, fruits, meat and other perishable products from the food processing industry for long durations, intended to remain effective for over 6-9 hrs in transit.
The main objective of this project was to assess the effectiveness of the TMS box designed by customer in facilitating the natural convection inside the box using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). This project was also intended to find the time when PCM starts to melt.
CFD results will also be used to provide time-varying temperature profiles at each face of the crate box, used to keep vegetables, fruits or meat.
Parameters Studied:
Transfers of heat through conduction and natural convection to the materials.
The CFD simulations were conducted for three different PCM 0types with different storage material of Lettuce (0C), Okra(-5C), Chicken (-25C).
Convection stream velocities.
Temperature profile around the crate and the TMS box.
Air flow Pathlines around the crate and the TMS box.
