The Design and Analysis of a Fruit Refrigeration System

Clemson University
ME 304-001
April 21, 2009
David Floyd
Mike Julian
Josh Martin
Problem Statement

Design a forced-air cooling system for a company whose refrigeration capacity is 200
tons. The cooling system must be designed for fruits whose diameters do not exceed 7 cm.
The fruits are to be cooled from an initial temperature of 28 ºC to an average temperature of 8
ºC. The air temperature is to remain between -2 ºC and 10 ºC at all times, while the velocity of
the air approaching the fruit must remain under 2m/s. The cooling section can be as wide as 3.5
m and as high as 2 m.

Obtain reasonable values for the fruit properties (specific heat, density, etc.) and
assuming a reasonable value of the packing of the box (i.e., fraction of air volume in a box),
recommend reasonable values for the quantities related to the thermal aspects of the forced air
cooling, including:

a) How long the fruits need to remain in the cooling section

b) The length of the cooling section
c) The air velocity approaching the cooling section
d) The product cooling capacity of the system, in kg (fruit)/hr
e) The volume flow rate of air
f) The type of heat exchanger for the evaporator and the surface area of the air inside

Assumptions:

1. Neglect heat generation from the fermentation and rotting of fruit.

2. Neglect heat transfer loss from radiation to the environment.
3. Neglect heat transfer loss from conduction to the wires holding the fruit in place due to
the wire diameter being very small in comparison to the size of the orange.
4. Laminar flow is assumed over all of the oranges from the front slate to the last slate in
each crate.
5. Boundary Layer is not greater than 1 cm [Ref. 6]

Constants of the incoming air and the slates:

 The initial velocity of air, Vi, was chosen to be 2 m/s to maximize the cooling capacity. A
higher velocity will reduce the cooling time of the fruit.
 The height of the slate containing the fruit is 2 m.
 The width of the slate containing the fruit is 3.5 m.
 The dimensionless ratio of inner and outer radii, r*, is taken as 1.
 The incoming air temperature, Tambient, is chosen to be 271 K. This incoming air
temperature is as low as allowed, which will maximize cooling.

Properties of an Orange:

Oranges were chosen for the analysis because of their dimensional consistency. The
diameter, D, was assumed to be 7 cm for all fruit. The initial temperature of each fruit, T fi, was
2
given to be 301 K. The final average fruit temperature throughout the refrigeration system does
not exceed 8.4 ºC. The 0.4 was chosen to accommodate higher temperatures for additional rows;
however, it is considered appropriate to avoid rounding up to 9 ºC.

The density, 𝛒, of the oranges was given by Mohsenin and taken as 1030 kg/m3, and the
thermal conductivity, ks, of the oranges at 286.15 K was taken as 0.5 W/m*K [Ref. 4]. The
thermal diffusivity of the Oranges, α, was found to be 1.2645*10 -7 m2/s [Ref. 4]. All other
properties used in calculations, formulas, and Matlab programs were taken at the respective
temperatures from appendix A [Ref. 3].

Properties of the Heat Exchanger

Th,i = 22.22 ºC
Th,o = -2 ºC
Tc,i = -20 ºC

Main Calculations

Refer to Appendix A2 for the Matlab code and a sample of the output as well as the units
used in all the formulas below.

Where is the average Nusselt number for the airflow, Re D is the Reynolds number
for the airflow, Pr is the Prandtl number for the air at the surface temperature, µ is the viscosity
of air at the air temperature, and µs is the viscosity at the surface temperature.

Where is the average heat transfer coefficient of the oranges, and kf is the thermal
conductivity of the air.

To obtain the time it took to cool all the fruits, the following Eq. (3) and Eq. (4) were
used in the Optimization Matlab Program and Manual Matlab Program. Using the input
parameters given and assumptions made, both programs output the time to cool the fruit.

1
q * = q o* sin(z 1r * )
z 1r *

3
 q o * = C1 exp(z 1 2 Fo)

is the surface temperature difference divided by the maximum possible temperature

difference, and is the internal temperature difference divided by the maximum possible
temperature difference. z 1 and C1 are based on the Biot Number and taken from Table 5.1 in
Incropera [Ref. 3]. Fourier’s number, Fo, is used to find the required time.

To obtain the length of the crates, the following formula was used. This formula, along
with the enthalpy program output [Appendix A2:2], provides the maximum number of rows that
can be cooled based on the exiting temperature.

Spacing is calculated inside the Matlab program [Appendix A2:3] and is commented for
reference. Given the exiting air temperature, the enthalpy program [Appendix A2:2] outputs the
max number of rows that can be cooled.

Equations (6) through (12) were used to obtain the product cooling capacity.

Qfruit = r cpVol (Ti  Tavg )

Qfruit is the maximum internal energy of the fruit, r is the density of an Orange, Vol is
the volume of one Orange, Cp is the specific heat capacity of an orange, Tavg is the average final
temperature of each orange, and Ti is the initial temperature of the fruit.

Qfruit
Qt =
time(sec)

Qt is the maximum internal energy of the fruit per time, time(sec) is the time in
seconds it takes to cool all the fruit in one slate.

Qavail = 200 * 3517.2

Qavailis the internal energy available to cool the fruit. For this situation, it is given as
200 tons. Multiplying by 3517.2 Watts/Ton converts the refrigeration capacity from Tons to
Watts.

Qavail
Fruitneeded =
Qt

Fruitneeded
CrateNum =
( fps )* (spc)

4
 Fruitneeded is the amount of fruit being cooled, and CrateNum is the number of crates
rounded down to nearest whole number. spc is the number of slates per crate, and fps is the
number of fruit per slate.

NewFruit = ( fps ) * ( spc ) * CrateNum

( NewFruit ) * ( FruitMass)
CoolingCapacity =
time

NewFruit is the new total number of fruit to be cooled. CoolingCapacity is the maximum
cooling capacity of the system, FruitMass is the mass of one orange, and time is the amount of
time in seconds it takes to cool all the fruit.

If the company wished to obtain the optimum number of rows for their system, they
could use the cooling capacity and optimization program [Appendix A2] output to obtain the
best-case scenario. For the situation described in the problem statement, the cooling capacity
was calculated and referenced from the optimization program’s output to determine the number
of rows as well as a number of crates for the best-case scenario.

The volumetric flow rate of the air, Vol flow , was found using Eq. (13), where Hslate is the
height of one slate and taken as 2 m; Wslate is the width of one slate and set at 3.5 m; and Vel initial
is the initial velocity of the air taken as 2 m/s.

Vol flow = ( H slate )* (Wslate ) *(Velinitial )

To evaluate the Heat exchanger, Eqs. (14) through (20) were used.

Where Nud is the Nusselt number. This value was taken from Table 8.1 for non-circular
tubes [Ref. 3].

In Eq. (15), hx is the heat transfer coefficient for the fluid, kf,x is the thermal conductivity
of the fluid, N is the number of gaps in the heat exchanger, and L is the length of the heat
exchanger. Eq. (15) was evaluated for both the cold fluid, R22, and the hot fluid, air by
substituting the appropriate property corresponding to x = c and x = h, respectively.

5
 Where q is the heat transfer of the hot fluid (air), h is the mass flow rate of the air, c p,h is
the specific heat of the air, Th,i is the incoming air temperature, and Th,o is the outgoing air
temperature. c is the mass flow rate of cold fluid (R22), c p,c is the specific heat of the R22, T c,i

is the incoming temperature of the R22, and Tc,o is the outgoing temperature of the R22, and ΔT lm
is the log mean temperature difference.

In Eq. (19), U is the overall heat transfer coefficient, and A is the total surface area of the
heat exchanger. Substituting h or c for x in Eq. (20) gives the velocity of the hot fluid and cold
fluid, respectively.

Similarly, Eq. (21) is used to evaluate the Reynolds number, ReD, for both the hot air, and
cold R22, where Dh,x is the hydraulic diameter of the hot or cold fluid inlet and exit, µx is the
fluid’s viscosity, and ρ is the fluid’s density.

The required surface area of the heat exchanger containing air, SA, was calculated using
Eq. (22) where a is the gap width.

Results

The refrigeration system consists of an open, square cross-section containing a crate with
multiple vertical slates of fruit. Fans placed in front of the crates blow air cooled by a heat
exchanger into the system to cool the fruit. Air approaches the crates with a velocity of 2 m/s
and temperature of -2 ºC. The vertical slates of fruit have oranges oriented horizontally in rows
next to each other, and the rows are stacked from the bottom to top to maximize the room
allowed. The oranges are held in place by a thin wire. The conductive effects of the wire were
neglected in the analysis due to its small diameter. The slates are placed in rows behind each
other, and each group of slates make up a crate of fruit.

6
 A Matlab program was developed so that a company manager can enter in specific
parameters, such as the number of fruit per slate and number of slates they wish to have in each
crate of fruit. The program uses these inputs to optimize the number of crates required to
maximize the refrigeration cooling capacity. This utilizes 99 to 99.9 percent of the 200 tons of
refrigeration capacity. However, the number of crates required could be very large, requiring a
large refrigeration space and multiple fans to accommodate this large amount of crates.

For the situation of 200 tons of cooling capacity given, the best design was created.
Many other designs exist that reach the max capacity, but the crates were very large; therefore, it
is suggested using 840 fruit per slate, with two slates per crate. The design would have to consist
of 104 crates of oranges resulting in an output of 33,453.607 kg/hr. This design uses 99.58% of
our maximum cooling capacity and cools a maximum of 174,720 oranges.

Figure 1 shows the heat exchanger used for this system. The heat exchanger used is a
wide-gap plate heat exchanger consisting of 80 gaps, where plates are used to divide the counter
flow of air and R-22 Refrigerant. R-22 refrigerant is a common coolant used in heat exchangers
of this type. This particular type of heat exchanger was chosen because it is widely used in
refrigeration industries [Ref. 5 and Ref. 2]. The length, L, of the square plates is 2.642 meters
and the gap between the plates, a, is 0.033024 meters. The heat exchanger cools air as it flows
across the plates, and fans are used to move the cooled air across the crates to cool the fruit.

Figure 1: Wide Gap Heat Exchanger for Refrigeration System

Answers to Questions in Problem Statement:

a) The fruits need to remain in each cooling section for 57.967 minutes.
7
 b) The length of each cooling section is 0.183 meters.
c) The velocity of the air approaching the cooling section is 2.0 m/s.
d) The product cooling capacity of the system is 33,453.607 kg/hr.
e) The Volumetric flow rate of the air is 14.0 m3/s.
f) The type of heat exchanger used is a wide gap plate heat exchanger. The surface area of
the air inside the heat exchanger is 560.045 m2.

Several different methods were considered to analyze the flow over the oranges, such as
modeling rows of oranges as cylinders, representing a group of oranges as a packed bed of
spheres, as well as others that proved inaccurate for the specified situation. Considering a row of
oranges as a cylinder presented optimization issues since the spacing between each orange could
not be defined. To evaluate a row of oranges as a cylinder, the spheres needed to be placed very
close together. However, evaluating the spheres close together does not optimize the system
because the air cannot flow easily between the tight spaces. If the spheres were spaced too far
apart, evaluating them as cylinders would be an inaccurate procedure.

Evaluating the oranges as a packed bed of spheres led the average convective heat
transfer coefficient for situations with a small amount of oranges to be excessively large. We
chose to use the sphere equations because we assumed that if the flow does not interrupt the
boundary layer of the fruit, the relation proves valid. For this analysis, it was assumed that a 2
cm gap between each fruit was sufficient to avoid boundary layer interactions between the fruit
[Ref. 6].

8
 References
(1) Cengel, Yunus A., Heat transfer a practical approach. 2nd ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill,
2003.

(2) Donabedian, Martin, Spacecraft Thermal Control Handbook. 2nd Vol. USA: Aerospace
Press, 2003.

(3) Incropera, DeWitt, Bergman, Lavine, Fundamentals of Heat and Mass Transfer. 6. USA:
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2008.

(4) Mohsenin, Nuri N., Thermal Properties of Foods and Agricultural Materials. New York:
Gordon and Breach Science Publishers.

(5) Muncy, Mark. "Plate Heat Exchanger Grows with Industry." Ethanol Producer Magazine.
2005. 18 April 2009 <http://ethanolproducer.com/article.jsp?article_id=437>.

(6) Munson, Young, Okiishi, Fundamentals of Fluid Mechanics. 5th ed. USA: John Wiley &
Sons, Inc., 2006.