Huang, H.; Lv, E.; Lu, H.; Guo, J. Experimental Analysis of a Spray Hydrocooler with Cold Energy Storage for Litchi. Appl. Sci.2023, 13, 8195.
Huang, H.; Lv, E.; Lu, H.; Guo, J. Experimental Analysis of a Spray Hydrocooler with Cold Energy Storage for Litchi. Appl. Sci. 2023, 13, 8195.
Huang, H.; Lv, E.; Lu, H.; Guo, J. Experimental Analysis of a Spray Hydrocooler with Cold Energy Storage for Litchi. Appl. Sci.2023, 13, 8195.
Huang, H.; Lv, E.; Lu, H.; Guo, J. Experimental Analysis of a Spray Hydrocooler with Cold Energy Storage for Litchi. Appl. Sci. 2023, 13, 8195.
Abstract
The shortage of precooling equipment in litchi producing regions could lead to a high loss rate, poor quality of litchis. It is urgent to develop a portable precooling device for litchi producing regions. In this study, a novel spray hydrocooler with thermal energy storage (TES) were designed, fabricated, and tested. A simple mathematical model of TES capacity, ice coil thermal resistance and refrigeration system was employed to determine hydrocooler parameters. Then designed the structure of the spray hydrocooler. Maximum charging test was implemented with full TES capacity and litchi spray hydrocooling experiments were carried out at different charging times, spray flow rate, and litchi load with one-third TES capacity. Results showed that: (1) the spray hydrocooler allows for the rapid and effective precooling of litchis; (2) the hydrocooler can precool 299 kg litchis with one-third TES storage, meet the precooling requirements; (3) the effective TES capacity achieved 1.25×108 J at the maximum TES capacity of the hydrocooler, while the energy efficiency ratio (EER) is 2; (4) the precooling capacity was maximum and the average power consumption was minimum when the litchi load was 23 kg and the spray flow rate was 30 L min-1. Longer charging time is the most important factor in increasing precooling capacity and reducing average power consumption.
Keywords
Thermal energy storage; Hydrocooler; Heat transfer; Refrigeration; Litchi
Subject
Engineering, Mechanical Engineering
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
