Cold room for perishables

Introduction to the cold room

Cold storage is used to store perishables. Perishables between production and last mile delivery process are stored. It is a widely practiced technique for handling bulk perishables. These perishables commodities are stored for a short period of time or in some cases for a longer period. It becomes essential to store these commodities under adequate low temperature to protect them from turn out injury. Relative humidity plays an important role. Fruits and vegetables have a restricted life. To increase the storage life it needs to cool down to removes field heat.

So cold rooms are designed as per the requirement of temperature. The following are the classification of the cold rooms.

• Walk-in cold room: It is kept at the distribution point.
• Small cold room: For the purpose of pre-cooling facilities for fresh fruits which are stored for export purpose.
• Multi-purpose cold room: It is designed to operate throughout the year to store a variety of perishables.
• Bulk Cold room: It is designed to store single commodity, normally which ae seasonal basis.
• Frozen cold room: It is to store fish, poultry, dairy products, meats, and processed products.

General components of cold rooms:

1. Puff (Polyurethane) panels: Insulated panels with pre-coated steel as the skin on all sides of the panels. Puff thickness is available on various sizes like 60mm, 80mm, 100mm, 120 mm and 150 mm.
   
   
   
   
2. Strip or air Curtain.
   
   
3. Door with locking mechanism and other accessories
   
   
4. Condenser unit with the compressor.
   
   
5. Indoor unit with cooling (Evaporator) coil,
   
   
6. Expansion valve and Refrigeration.
   
   
7. Control panel
   
   
8. Electrical wires or cables
9. Refrigeration pipe along with heat preservation.
10. A pipeline connecting refrigeration.
11. Drain pipe.
12. Refrigerants.
13. Sealant, Rivets and some fasteners.

What is the eutectic plate system cold room?

This cold room all other parts or components are the same as the conventional, the only difference is, this cold room does not use the indoor unit. It uses the eutectic plates (PCM plates) which store the thermal energy. This energy is used as and when required. It is very useful in the areas where the electricity supply is irregular. These plates give back up of 10 hrs. to 12 hrs.

How the eutectic plate store the thermal energy?

Eutectic plates are filled with required PCM. These plates are having condenser coil inside which freezes the PCM once condensing unit goes on. Once PCM freezes compressor cuts off by control panel. These freeze plates can be utilized as an when required.