Development of a Solar Precooling Evaporative Chamber to Improve the Storage Indicators of Tomato Fruits in Desert Conditions

Abstract

Precooling is one of the most important processing to improve storage indicators and shelf life for fruits and vegetables, especially in desert regions. An Evaporative cooling unit operating with solar energy was used to store summer tomato fruits. The main component is a developed evaporating wchamper, its consists of three walls, the inner wall was made of high conducting non-rust metal, water wall wich represented the middle part and the outer wall is made of highly porous pottery panels. On the other hand, an evaporative cooling unit was added to one of the store’s walls in order to provide humidity and cool air. The results were compared with a traditional storage room and field sorage in the same field conditions. The results showed a significant superiority of the developed pre-cooling champer parameters compared to the normal storage room and field storage the superiority of the two air speeds treatments (3.6 and 4.3 m.sec-1) compared to the non-operation of the evaporative cooling unit. the superiority was observed in indicators of fruits temperature, hardness, TSS, lost weight ratio and number of storage days of tomato fruits. This result comes from the good conditions of temperature and humidity in the pre-cooling chamber.