An Experimental Study of Convective Heat Transfer Coefficient and NusseltNumber for Fruits inside FACCC for Sustainable Cold Chain

Abstract

Temperature change for several agriculture products, such as fruits, for maintaining shelf life potency varies during storage and transportation. Design of Free Air Cooling Conditioning Chamber (FACCC) is introduced through this paper for temperature control of fruits to improve cold supply chain effectiveness during transportation. Temperature control by improving the heat transfer rate of fruits improves the shelf life of the commodity and maintains its potency. In this paper, we have studied the skin mass transfer coefficient of different commodities and established the same as a function of the Stanton number and Prandtl number through Reynolds analogy. Accordingly, we calculated the Stanton number of different commodities for various values of the Reynolds number, which is obtained by operating four fans fitted in FACCC. Paper calculates heat transfer rate, and Nusselt number for selected fruits and the experimental results show that Nusselt number varies 29.65 to 190 inside the FACCC with varying airflow conditions and with different temperatures. Surface heat transfer coefficient inside the FACCC varies from 17 W/m2K to 278 W/m2K supported by the different ambient condition. Validation of FACCC performance has been done by comparing the heat transfer rate and Nusselt number from published literature. Thus, it is found that the use of FACCC is effective in improving the cold chain of fruits in hot countries where a large amount of agriculture products get wasted due to improper storing and transportation.