Effects of wind speed on performance of a novel forced-air ice slurry wet precooling system

Abstract

Aiming at the problems of low humidity and high dry consumption in the present forced-air precooling room, the combination of the ice slurry wet cooling system with the forced-air precooling was proposed, and a novel forced-air ice slurry wet precooling test platform was designed and built. The purpose of this paper is to experimentally study the effects of wind speeds on the performance of ice slurry wet precooling system by taking tomatoes as precooling objects, including precooling rate, precooling uniformity, precooling energy consumption and weight loss ratio of tomatoes. Also, the results are compared with those of other similar studies such as traditional forced-air precooling system. The results show that with the increase of wind speed, the precooling rate increases, the required precooling time is shortened, and the temperature variation coefficient of tomatoes decreases first and then increased, that is, the precooling uniformity becomes better and then worse. When the wind speed is 2.5 m/s, the overall precooling uniformity is the best. The precooling energy consumption decreases first and then increases, and is relatively low when the wind speed is between 1.5 m/s and 2.5 m/s (lowest at 2.5 m/s), which is lower than that of traditional forced-air system. With the increase of wind speed, the weight loss of tomatoes decreases first and then fluctuates slightly, and the weight loss ratio is about 0.1 %, which is much lower than that of tomatoes in the traditional forced-air precooling system. Overall, the maximum wind speed is not recommended to exceed 2.5 m/s for the precooling system studied in this work. The results can provide references for the further research and development of forced-air precooling technology.