Display Cabinet Research Articles

Unwrapped food product display shelf life assessment

Chilled foods have been available since the 1960s. However, over the past 20 years, the market has been driven by the huge social, economic and demographic changes that have influenced our eating habits. This has contributed to making the chilled food production and retail in the UK one of the world’s fastest-growing food sectors with food retail stores, restaurants and cafeterias. One very important fixture in these commercial establishments is the display cabinet where food is chilled and displayed. Many guidelines & regulations exist regarding displaying of food in cabinets. Amongst these are ones that relate to food deterioration such as the Food Hygiene Regulations 1995 (updated in January 2006), which related specifically to the retail sale and distribution of chilled foods. The most important point of these regulations was a requirement for sensitive foodstuffs to be maintaining at 8°C or below (Part II). These regulations were focused on reducing the risk of bacterial spoilage associated with chilled foods. The Regulations did not engage in the deterioration problems associated with moisture transfer and evaporating loss of unwrapped chilled foods displayed in delicatessen cabinets. This paper present result from theoretical and experimental investigation into the display shelf life in terms of bacterial spoilage and weight loss for some unwrapped sandwiches components including vegetables, tuna, cheese and beef. The output of this work showed that the display shelf life in terms of weight loss is shorter compared to the shelf life in terms of bacterial spoilage and it’s related to food drying rate. Surface drying, increases the weight loss and leads to colour changes that are undesirable and results in shorter display shelf life. Weight loss was affected by air relative humidity, velocity and temperature. Therefore, more consideration should be given to environmental boundary conditions, which have direct impact on the quality and shelf life of unwrapped product.

Pro-circular behaviours and refrigerated display cabinets: supporting resource efficiency in the retail refrigeration sector

There is a need to change business and behaviour models from the linear to the circular in order to conserve energy and resources. This paper identifies what pro-circular behaviours can influence the development of a Circular Economy, with particular reference to the retail refrigeration industry.Pro-circular behaviour is an action that is brought about due to the prioritisation of resource-efficiency with the aim of supporting the growth of a Circular Economy. A Circular Economy is an economic and industrial system where resources are kept in use for as long as possible. Greater uptake of alternative business models in the UK could help to create a more sustainable industry in retail refrigeration.

CFD comparisons of open-type refrigerated display cabinets with/without air guiding strips

Open-type vertical refrigerated display cabinets are used widely in supermarkets and grocery stores due to its attraction for customers and food merchandisers. These cabinets, however, are less energy efficient than cabinets with glass doors because of the interactions between the air curtain, that is used to provide an artificial barrier between the air in the cabinets, and the air in food premises. To improve the energy efficiency of open fronted refrigerated display cabinets, many types of air curtains have been designed, including single layer air curtains, multi-layer air curtains and shelf tip air curtains amongst others. An approach, considered in recent years to improve the efficiency of air curtains is the use of air guiding strips at the front face of the shelves of open-type vertical refrigerated display cabinets with single layer air curtains. This paper uses Computational Fluid Dynamics modelling to investigate the influence of air guiding strips on the performance of vertical multi-deck refrigerated display cabinets.The results showed that the air guiding strips accelerate the air curtain vertically; leading to a stronger and stiffer air curtain, consequently inhibit the infiltration of the ambient warm air into the cabinet. The average temperature of simulated food in the cabinet decreases by 4.9 °C compared to the cabinet without the strip due to the improved protection of the stiffer air curtain. The cooling capacity required to maintain the food chilled decreases by 34%.

Comparative analysis on the energy use and environmental impact of different refrigeration systems for frozen food supermarket application

In this paper the impact on the store’s energy use by different refrigeration systems, remote and centralised, is investigated as well as their environmental impact. The study is performed using the energy simulation program EnergyPlus in a reference baseline model which has been verified against measured energy and environmental conditions data. The refrigeration system of the case study includes plugged-in display cabinets to serve both medium temperature (MT) and low temperature (LT) refrigeration loads. Centralised systems are compared with the remote plugged-in refrigeration cabinets. The different refrigeration systems studied are, a) two parallel centralised systems for MT and LT loads, b) two parallel cascade systems (R134a/CO2) for MT and LT loads and c) a transcritical CO2 booster. The study is performed for DSY London weather file to capture the risk of warmer than a typical year consequences in centralised refrigeration systems operation. Besides these refrigeration systems, the CO2 transcritical appears as the one of the most promising replacement in terms not only of energy use reduction due to its high efficiency in London climate but on its low contribution to global warming as well.

Incentivising pro-circular behaviours: proposing a new enhanced capital allowance scheme for remanufactured products - the case of refrigerated display cabinets in the United Kingdom

A number of behavioural barriers are preventing the development of a Circular Economy in the retail refrigeration sector and it is possible, that financial incentives could help to overcome them. Using Refrigerated Display Cabinets as an example, this paper aims to encourage dialogue between manufacturers and policymakers about developing a new Enhanced Capital Allowance eligibility scheme for a variety of remanufactured product groups. This could be pivotal in encouraging the industry to become more resource-efficient and pro-circular.

Thermal comfort in the supermarket environment – multiple enquiry methods and simultaneous measurements of the thermal environment

In the supermarket environment three factors must be considered: food (food quality), personnel (working conditions), and customers. The customers do not remain in this environment very long but are of particular interest since they constitute the supermarket's commercial basis. However, there are no recommendations on the indoor environment based on this category. This study compares the perceived indoor thermal environment with simultaneous objective measurements of the thermal environment and includes multiple enquiry methods. These methods have been used for this specific environment in order to understand how customers perceive, evaluate, and prefer variations in the thermal environment. Measurements were performed in summer and winter in front of twelve display cabinets, over 1100 questionnaires have been received. To provide recommendations, this study presents measured and perceived comfort in supermarkets, information which can be used for prescribing suitable thermal environments for customers.

Experimental investigation of the performance of cool storage shelf for vertical open refrigerated display cabinet

In order to improve the performance of refrigerated display cabinet, decrease the food temperature, improve the uniformity of food temperature and restrain the temperature fluctuation during the defrosting time, a new kind of composite shelf is designed for the food vertical open refrigerated display cabinet (VORDC), which is based on the heat pipe technology and the cool storage characteristics of phase change materials (PCMs) among the heat pipes. Experimental results show that the novel composite shelf can enhance the heat transfer between food and shelf, reduce the core temperature of food, decrease temperature fluctuation in defrosting process and reduce the temperature difference along height, width and depth direction. Compared with the normal shelf, the temperature differences of food packages on both sides of the composite shelves (RT3, RT4 and RT5) are reduced by 40%, 80% and 40%, respectively. The average temperature of food packages is reduced by 13.7–32% and the temperature fluctuation of food packages is reduced by 53.3–83.3% during defrosting. For these kinds of composite shelves, the temperature of food packages of RT4 composite shelf is lowest, and the average temperature of food packages at each layers and rows are controlled in 5°C. This novel composite shelve can effectively reduce the temperature rise during defrosting, and improve the performance of VORDC obviously.

The Innocents: Reading Refugees in National Culture and Diasporic Literatures

The Innocents: Reading Refugees in National Culture and Diasporic Literatures Crystal Parikh (bio) Early in Lê Thi Diem Thúy’s novel The Gangster We Are All Looking For, Lê’s first-person six-year-old narrator finds herself in communion with the glass animals locked in a display case in the office of the Russell family, which sponsors her, her father, and four other men—“the uncles”—who accompanied them as they fled from Vietnam to the United States. She tells the animals about her journey on the boat and rescue at sea by the U.S. Navy, memories of her mother from whom she and her father have been (temporarily) separated, and about her dreams in which her family is reunited. Ultimately, she smashes the display cabinet, hurling a glass disk containing a motionless butterfly whose captivity has fascinated and troubled her: The disk flew hard and fast, but not where I had sent it. It crashed through the glass doors of the display cabinet. The animals’ knees buckled. As they fell, some of the animals lost their heads while others’ bodies broke in two. The broken bodies of some protected the bodies of others from shattering completely. Some lay on their sides, staring out the window.1 The act of destruction brings the makeshift Vietnamese family’s residence with the Russells to a rapid end, and the novel moves on to narrate accounts of life after the narrator and her father are reunited with her mother. It centers in particular on the family members’ growing estrangement from one another, especially as they belatedly grapple with the loss of the narrator’s brother, who had drowned in Vietnam before the family’s departure. The narrator herself is likened to any number of animals, a “common pigeon,” a “headless chicken,” and a mouse.2 And The Gangster closes with the narrator as a young adult recalling a visit to the beach with her parents “during our first spring together in California”: “As my parents stood on the beach leaning into each other, I ran, like a dog unleashed, toward the lights.”3 The figuring of the narrator as an animal evokes a duality in terms of her status as a refugee. On the one hand, seemingly excluded from the family of “citizen and man,” to whom rights are directly granted, she instead appears herself situated in a community of “broken bodies,” some of them perhaps better “protected” than others, but all rendered as the bare life that state-lessness engenders. But the trope also marks her as a kind of willful, if disorganized, form of life who exceeds the injunctions of the humanitarian nation that receives her. Read through this feral animality, the innocence ascribed to her as a child and as a refugee comes up against the limits of tolerance that the liberal imagination is willing to extend to her and her kind. As it turns out, the childish refugee might not be as [End Page 547] docile as the broken glass animals with whom she seeks identification but whom she also destroys as she seeks to deliver their salvation. When one observes refugee realities and politics from the institutional and intellectual vantage of critical American studies, a peculiar set of contradictions regarding the constructions of innocence, responsibility, and redemption or salvation becomes readily—and maddeningly—apparent: • First, due to its outsized influence in the postwar international order, the United States was pivotal in narrowing the scope of the prevailing definition of “refugee,” and in particular the one codified in international legal instruments such as the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. Namely, the refugee as the innocent victim who “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country,” is defined precisely as bare life, incapable of political agency and responsibility, animated instead only by trepidation and distress. • Second, certainly since 1945—but also in many instances before then, especially where the western hemisphere is concerned...

Multi-ejector R744 booster refrigerating plant and air conditioning system integration – A theoretical evaluation of energy benefits for supermarket applications

The multi-ejector rack is the most promising technology to push the so-called “CO2 equator” further south and improve the global energy efficiency of R744 supermarket refrigeration systems.This paper theoretically compares the energy consumption of a CO2 refrigerating plant equipped with a multi-ejector unit with that of a R404A direct expansion system (DXS), of a conventional CO2 booster configuration and of two CO2 solutions using parallel compression. The energy benefits related to the adoption of low temperature (LT) overfed display cabinets were also assessed. Furthermore, various scenarios involving different sizes of the supermarket, integration and capacity of the air conditioning (AC) system and efficiency of the parallel compressors were investigated. The evaluations were carried out by considering different locations in Southern Europe. The results showed that, as a function of the selected boundary conditions, energy savings ranging from 15.6% to 27.3% could be accomplished with the multi-ejector concept over DXS.

The Observatory of Innovation in Healthcare Management in Catalonia: supporting transferability of good experiences in healthcare management

Context : The aims of the Observatory of Innovation in Healthcare Management in Catalonia are to collect, validate, organize and value, the knowledge of the Catalan health system from many innovative experiences that are being developed today. The Observatory brings together the efforts made by the organisations in innovating in several spheres of management. It provides a forum for compiling innovative experiences and it offers an innovation community web page fostering interaction among 450 professionals who exchange their experiences. Methods : The process to register an innovative experience starts first with the signing up in the Innovation community. Innovative experiences should met criteria on implementation, bringing a change, impact on resources and scalability. Secondly, organisations may submit a self-assessment of their experiences. Then, the review and the self-assessment evaluation of the innovative management experiences constitutes the third context in which the Observatory operates, conducting a quality analysis done by the OIGS, to check that the experience meets with the established inclusion criteria. Experiences which pass the assessment phase are then awarded a certificate of quality issued by the AQuAS. Results : The Observatory compiles a total of 183 innovative experiences. The majority of these experiences are focused on improving strategic and care processes, handling patients with chronic illnesses, use of healthcare information technology and the consumption of pharmaceuticals in the area of primary and specialized care. A total of 49 out of the 183 experiences fall within the specialized care in coordination with primary care area of action; 45 experiences refer to the area of specialized care. In terms of key themes, 101 experiences deal with improvements in care procedures and strategies, followed by 26 experiences concerning management of chronic care patients, 25 regarding ICT and telemedicine, and 12 pharmaceutical experiences. Discussion : The Observatory of Innovation in Healthcare Management in Catalonia brings together the efforts made by the organisations in innovation in several spheres of management One of the main challenges however will be to support scalability and transferability of these innovative experiences (new care pathway, service or technology) that have the potential for wide scale spread in other areas to improve in the end outcomes and patient satisfaction. Conclusions : The identification of innovative experiences allows compiling some of the best practices observed in the system. The Observatory through the public and innovation community website constitutes a display cabinet for supporting transferability of good practices and it also forges ties among institutions creating synergies and joint projects. One of the main challenges in the future will be to identify barriers and drivers for the implementation, sharing problems, acknowledging failures and finding solutions in different contexts for the adoption and spread of good practices.

Theoretical study on a frost-free refrigerated display cabinet

This study deals with a frost-free refrigerated display cabinet, in which frosting can be retarded by dehumidifying the air before it enters the evaporator of the display cabinet via a desiccant-coated heat exchanger. Because the desiccant can be regenerated via the condensation heat of the refrigerant (which is exhausted into ambient air in conventional refrigerated display cabinets), the proposed system can achieve high energy efficiency. Calculation shows that the coefficient of performance (COP) of this system is 3.1 and the daily electricity consumption of the compressor is 10.5 kWh when the temperature (TRA) and relative humidity (RHRA) of the return air entering the evaporator are 12 °C and 0.6, respectively. Furthermore, it is found that TRA and RHRA significantly affect the COP: COP increases by about 115% when TRA varies from 8 to 14 °C, and increases by 35% when RHRA varies from 0.5 to 0.8.

The novel use of phase change materials in an open type refrigerated display cabinet: A theoretical investigation

In this paper, 2D CFD models have been developed for a prototype refrigerated open type multi-deck display cabinet with and without integrated phase change material (PCM). The models can predict the effect of adding a PCM container on cabinet efficiencies, air temperature distributions, product temperatures and air flow patterns inside the cabinet at a range of operating conditions including space air temperatures and evaporator air velocities. To validate the cabinet models, the prototype cabinet was mounted in an air conditioned chamber and extensive experiments were conducted at constant space air temperature and relative humidity. The cabinet models have therefore been validated through comparison with experiment results for air temperatures at different locations of the airflow path and of food products. Simulation results show that significant energy can be saved through the installation of a PCM container. Further benefits include greater stabilization of product temperatures during defrost periods for the modified display cabinet. Consequently, the validated models can be used to explore and analyse the cabinet performance and control strategies at various operating and design conditions.

Modelling commercial refrigeration systems coupled with water storage to improve energy efficiency and perform heat recovery

A basic CO2 transcritical/subcritical commercial refrigeration system is considered, applied to cold rooms and display cabinets in a supermarket. Subcooling of the refrigerant or heat recovery from condensation can be performed, taking advantage of a large fire prevention water tank. The whole refrigeration system is modelled in a TRNSYS environment, taking into account the hourly weather data and calculating the hourly cooling load demand from display cabinets and cold rooms equipment. New types have been written to describe display cabinets and cold rooms, CO2 refrigerating units and a particular water store.Simulations consider a simple double compression cycle with liquid receiver, and other options among which an auxiliary compressor. Results show that CO2 plants are feasible and energetically acceptable in mild climates, provided that improvements to standard cycle are adopted. Furthermore, heat recovery can be effectively performed through the employment of a heat storage.

TR-PIV measurements and POD analysis of the plane wall jet subjected to lateral perturbation

An experimental investigation has been carried out using time resolved particle image velocimetry (TR-PIV) to investigate the aerodynamic behavior of a wall jet subjected to external lateral stream (ELS). The experiments are performed on a reduced-scale model representing a generic configuration of a refrigerated display cabinet (RDC) by focusing on the near-field region downstream the nozzle exit (x/e<10) where strong interactions are expected between the jet core, wall boundary and external lateral stream. Comparisons of experimental data obtained with and without external perturbation make it possible to quantify the effect of the perturbation on the time-averaged wall jet characteristics such as airflow patterns, mean velocity and root mean square (RMS) of velocity fluctuations, Reynolds shear stress, space correlations and the development of primary and secondary instabilities. The vortex shedding frequency of the perturbed wall jet has been assessed through a spectral analysis. It was found that the Strouhal number decreases with an increase of lateral-flow velocity, indicating an inhibiting effect exerted by the lateral flow on the formation and the development of Kelvin–Helmholtz (K–H) vortices in the outer shear layer. This paper also gives an insight into the altered behavior of coherent structures related to perturbed jet in terms of topology, alignment, trajectory and vortex shedding frequency. The break-up of vortex filaments in the braid region and its effect on the pairing process and the mutual interaction between inner and outer layer vortices has also been discussed. A proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) analysis has been performed showing the role of the ELS in redistributing the energy content in favor of small length scales and in the emerging of less well-organized structures.

Investigation of the Influence of Relative Humidity on the Two Air Curtains in Multi-Deck Display Cabinet

The air curtains are used as a seal to prevent the infiltration through display cabinets and consequently energy is decreased. The relative humidity plays an important role in cooling load of display cabinets. This work aims to present an experimental and numerical study of the influence of ambient relative humidity on the two air curtains in multi-deck display cabinet at different temperature and comparing the results with a single air curtain. For validation, the present work results are obtained by using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code (Fluent6) and compared with previous researches.

Study on Vertical Air Curtains for Multi-deck Viewer Refrigerated Display

Air curtains are devices used in refrigerated display cabinets and the entrance of air conditioned spaces is aimed to reduce the breakthrough of heat, moisture and contaminants between the conditioned environment and the surrounding ambient, consequently reducing energy costs. The main objective of the present work is to study the parameter affecting the performance of air curtains used in viewer refrigerators using one and two air curtains at different ambient conditions, in order to reduce the air infiltration and consequently the energy consumption. The results of one and two air curtains are compared, where two air curtains are more effective than one air curtain

BGS — Education through open doors and OpenGeoscience

The British Geological Survey (BGS) has supported geoscience education since it opened the Museum of Economic Geology in Whitehall, London, in 1841. However, the BGS has taken some large leaps since the wooden display cabinets of yesteryear, and now the public can browse a geologic map of the entire United Kingdom on their mobile phones, fly over or under the landscape using GeoVisionary, or view and print our fossil collections in three dimensions. In 2010, the BGS opened its doors to its vast collections of data through OpenGeoscience, which has stimulated opportunities to educate the public through a variety of online maps and free data. The BGS also hosts events such as “Open Days” and Rock Detective Clubs and attends science fairs to demonstrate its latest research or simply to educate and inspire the next generation of scientists. But nothing engages children's imagination like the destructive power of an earthquake. The BGS-led School Seismology project offers in-depth learning about the structure of the earth through a set of simple classroom experiments and the opportunity to work with live data from real earthquakes. The School Seismology project has become popular with teachers around the world and will shortly venture into space to explore the seismology of Mars.

Optimization and investigation of the effect of velocity distribution of air curtains on the performance of food refrigerated display cabinets

This paper focuses on improving the performance of the vertical open refrigerated display cabinets (VORDC) by optimizing the structure of deflector, which is affected by inlet velocity and velocity distribution of air curtains. The results show that the temperature of products located at the front and at the rear reduces as the increases of inlet velocity of air curtains. The increase of the inlet velocity of air curtains can strengthen the disturbance inside the VORDC, and also decrease the temperature of products inside the VORDC; the increase of the outer velocity of air curtain will exacerbate the disturbance outside the VORDC and decrease air curtain’s performance. The present study can provide a theoretical foundation for the design of VORDC.

Beyond Braille on Toilet Doors: Museum Curators and Audiences with Vision Impairment

Beyond Braille on Toilet Doors: Museum Curators and Audiences with Vision Impairment

Fact, fiction and value in the Museum of Innocence

This article explores the complexities of ethnography and aesthetics in the Museum of Innocence, a museum in Istanbul based on a novel by Orhan Pamuk. A cross between a museum and an art gallery, the Museum of Innocence houses objects described in the eponymous novel in display cabinets corresponding to the chapters of the book. The present contribution looks into the issue of legitimacy and value, from multiple perspectives, in a cultural institution that combines two epistemologies with a postmodern blurring of artefact and art. In doing so, it traces the parallels between the empirical reality portrayed in the novel and the display arrangements in the Museum, touching upon the tension between the various curatorial choices. Through objects and textual supplements, the Museum engages in cultural translation while eventually asserting aesthetic autonomy. Pointing out the multivalent nature of the collection, this study aims to encourage a reconsideration of dualistic understandings of value in museums and art galleries.