The effect of alternating ventilation on forced air pre-cooling of cherries

Abstract

Abstract Large temperature gradients caused by the traditional forced air pre-cooling method leads to the decrease of the shelf life of horticultural products. An alternating ventilation of air pre-cooling is one of the key methods to reduce the temperature inhomogeneity of cherries. The research results on the alternating ventilation change showed that the operating time of fan was not neglected in the forced air pre-cooling. It reached up to 7.70% of total pre-cooling time when the number of ventilation changes no more than five. In general, the total pre-cooling time was proportional to the number of ventilation increase. The final inhomogeneity of cherries first quickly decreased from 0.237 to 0.097 with air direction changing once and then fluctuated from 0.09 to 0.120 with the number of ventilation changing from 1 to 5. Through the comprehensive analysis of temperature inhomogeneity and pre-cooling time, the optimal alternating ventilation on forced air pre-cooling of cherries was ventilation changing once.