Return to search

Air circulation inside refrigerated semi-trailers transporting fresh produce

In North America, refrigerated semi-trailers are commonly used to transport large volume of produce. They are equipped with refrigeration and air circulation systems to provide an optimum transit enviromnent for the produce. Air circulation plays a vital role in maintaining produce temperature during transport. Its performance is greatly affected by the availability of air channels through and around the load. / This study is an attempt to evaluate the performance of the air circulation system. Air temperature data was gathered from 20 mixed loads of produce transported in trailers having a variety of accessories and using different loading patterns. Pearson correlation coefficient was used as an indicator to describe the air distribution inside the semi-trailers. The results showed that the air distribution inside semi-trailers is generally not uniform. In most cases, the areas that received little amount of airflow were the middle section along the length and width, and the middle and bottom sections along the height of trailers. The variability in the results precluded any determination of the effect of trailer accessories and loading patterns on the air distribution.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.32834
Date January 2001
CreatorsHui, Ka Po Catherine, 1976-
ContributorsRaghavan, Vijaya (advisor), Vigneault, Clement (advisor)
PublisherMcGill University
Source SetsLibrary and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
Formatapplication/pdf
CoverageMaster of Science (Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering.)
RightsAll items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated.
Relationalephsysno: 001872091, proquestno: MQ80108, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest.

Page generated in 0.0021 seconds