Solar PV powered on-farm cold storage design software HimSaurya for improving storage quality and reducing wastage of perishable agricultural produce

Abstract

Cold-chain management in India has been accelerated in last decades to reduce postharvest losses. However, most of the tropical and sub-tropical agricultural as well as horticultural produce goes in waste due to its perishable nature and improper cold chain management on-farm. Thus, apart from the large cold storage chambers for long-term storage, refrigeration system is also required for on-farm or in production catchment for agricultural crops during short-term storage. However, designing an on-farm cold storage is a challenge due to its complexities during design and refrigeration system. In this paper, a software, ‘HimSaurya’ was developed for Solar PV powered on-farm cold storage design. It was developed in Visual Studio Express Desktop 2012 environment. Cold storage structural design, refrigeration system equipment and solar PV panel design were implemented in Himsaurya. The vapor absorption system (VAS) was adopted in cold storage refrigeration system. An optimized energy efficiency was also investigated further using the HOMER software. The sensitivity of HimSaurya was assessed for different tropical, and subtropical agricultural produce e.g. mango, sapota, strawberry, and tomato. Results are showing a linear trend in cooling load with respect to product storage capacity. The results are promising with improving storage quality and reducing wastage of perishable agricultural produce.