How to design the perfect carton: multi-scale solutions for real-world answers

The regulations governing the international market for citrus fruit often require specific temperature conditions for the preservation of fruit quality.
However, fruit packaging can obstruct airflow, with the hole design of the carton being the interface between the fruit and the cooling air.
Cooling efficiency can be measured by how much resistance the packaging and fruit pose to the cooling airflow.
Higher resistance means a lower cooling capacity, as less cooling airflow penetrates the packed fruit.
Thus, characterising the fruit pallets by how much resistance each pallet component contributes to the airflow resistance would be desirable.
The resistance would allow for the standardisation of some measures that can be used in the industry.
In addition, a method to combine the different components in a circuit network to determine the predicted resistance to airflow would be desirable.
The curve of the pressure versus airflow can be used to determine the resistance to airflow, depending on the equation used to fit onto the curve.
A circuit approach to do this, with applications in mining, involves predicting the pressure in specific nodes, in which pressure is equivalent to the voltage, airflow to the current, and the resistance relates the voltage to the current in a quadratic (rather than linear, as for Ohm’s law) relationship.

VII International Conference Postharvest Unlimited

S.-H. Chung, H. Geldenhuys, C. Coetzee, T. Berry

packaging design, airflow resistance, circuitry analysis, cooling performance, citrus fruit, standardisation

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2024.1396.55