Experimental characterization and modelling of refrigeration of pork carcasses during transport in field conditions

Abstract

Measurements of air and product temperatures were conducted at different positions in a semitrailer loaded by 480 warm half carcasses of pork (core temperature ~ 14°C, surface temperature ~ 7°C). The refrigerating curves of 8 instrumented half carcasses during the transport shows that the core temperature decreases significantly reaching the recommended value of 7°C almost everywhere after 9h whereas the product surface temperature decreases slightly (~ 5°C after 9h). A simplified model base on an analytical solution was proposed to predict the surface, core and average temperature changes during transport. The convective heat transfer coefficient of 7.7 W.m-2.K-1 was used in the modelling. This value represents the average value of the measurement in a reduced scale of refrigerated vehicle loaded by reduced scale of carcasses model. The refrigerating capacity was estimated for different loading ratios of warm carcasses in semitrailer. It was shown that the studied semitrailer has enough capacity to evacuate the heat whatever the percentage of warm carcasses.