Development of fruit simulators for postharvest cold chain optimization.

Due to the high cost and variable nature of fruit, it is not easy to conduct commercial scale experiments for research. Replacing fruit with simulators/analogues could solve these issues. To mimic fruit, a simulator must contain the same important properties so that the simulation is representative of the fruit cooling condition (e.g. the heat transfer mechanisms involved in precooling and storage). This study describes how a time-scaled heat transfer approach can be applied to fruit simulator design. The time-scaled approach hypothesis is that, if an object mimics the shape and thermal conductivity of the product, the cooling profile of the object can represent the product with scaled adjustment by the ratio of volumetric specific heat capacity. Experiments have been conducted. and the results confirm the feasibility of the approach. This implies that experimental results can be obtained with a significant reduction in experimental time, if the time-scaled approach simulator is used