Journal of Food, Agriculture and Environment

Improving the layout of ventilation ports in packaging for fresh produce using computational fluid dynamics

Author(s):

Hiroaki Kitazawa *, Naoko Hasegawa

Recieved Date: 2014-06-02, Accepted Date: 2014-09-10

Abstract:

Packaging for fresh produce must sometimes include features that ensure uniform and rapid airflow to enable cooling and gas exchange. For this reason, such packaging usually has ventilation ports. However, attempting to understand cooling and ventilation efficiency by actually manufacturing various types of packaging in order to develop packaging with maximum ventilation efficiency would require substantial time and effort. Therefore, the size and layout of the vent ports in the packaging of fresh produce is presumably not determined based on any scientific rationale. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is a method to analyse the behaviour of fluids in space. By setting appropriate parameter values, no great difference was found between the simulation value and the measured value for temperature change when air passes through the packaging. Consequently, in this study, to optimise the layout of ventilation ports in packaging made of corrugated fibreboard for fresh produce, we used CFD simulation to propose an improved vent layout for uniform internal ventilation of one-layer packaging for strawberries. Simulations were conducted in three steps: the first step involved estimating airflow of packaging with various port layouts; the second step was proposing improved port layouts for the packaging; and the last step was the estimation of the packaging’s ventilation ability based on improved port layouts. Our results suggested that, with the improved port layout resulting from CFD simulation, it is possible to induce large airflow in the lower level of one-layer packaging for strawberries. However, further study to investigate the shape and number of ventilation ports is needed to achieve uniform ventilation in the upper layer of packaging. Therefore, in future studies, differences in the number and shape of ports that affect airflow in this space will be considered.

Keywords:

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD), fresh produce, packaging, ventilation port

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Journal: Journal of Food, Agriculture and Environment
Year: 2014
Volume: 12
Issue: 3&4
Category: Food and Health
Pages: 46-50

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