Impact of surface area and porosity on the cooling performance of evaporative cooling devices

Evaporative cooling devices are low-cost, low-energy solutions for post-harvest storage of fruits and vegetables on farmlands. Surface area and porosity are two design parameters that affect the cooling devices' evaporation rate and cooling performance. Both design parameters lack prior systematic testing that methodically varies levels of surface area and material porosity to understand their effects on these devices' cooling performance (e.g. maximum temperature drop, duration of high internal relative humidity, cooling efficiency and total cooling). For fruits and vegetables, storage environments with low temperature and high humidity are critical to reduce deterioration. In this thesis, ridges were cut into the outer wall of pot-in-pot evaporative cooling devices at four different interridge distances to vary total available surface area. Sawdust was added to clay in different ratios to create devices with varying porosity.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Luu, Trang(Trang N.)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Daniel Frey.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/129010

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/129010