Abstract:
Food loss and waste is a global problem, approximately 40 to 50% of fruits and vegetables
are lost annually, exceeding 1.3 billion tons of food globally, with an estimated 750 billion
US dollars wasted yearly. Throughout the stages of cultivation, handling, postharvest, storing, processing, distribution, and consumption, food is lost. A smart cold
storage and reefer container is a sophisticated thermal and relative humidity control system
designed to preserve and effectively use perishable food products. Due to no proper postharvest and transportation management, we are not losing the quantity, but we are also
affected by losing nutritional quality of vegetables and fruits. The present study focused on
reducing post-harvest loss of fruits and vegetables, more specifically on tomatoes during
storing and transportation by providing an energy efficient small size solar powered smart
cold storage solution with real time remote control of temperature and relative humidity.
Solar panels are installed on the roof and walls of cold storage boxes for power generation
during peak hours and batteries are installed for backup during low solar hours. The cooling
is achieved by Vapor compression cycle. The temperature and percent relative humidity
are set by a mobile app and are controlled by microcontroller. The cold storage box can be
placed in ambient and can also be fixed in a vehicle for transportation as reefer container.
The cold storage box includes both hardware and software parts, this IoT based control
system is tested on a 110 liters DC chest freezer. The modeling of the temperature and
relative humidity distribution inside cold storage walls was done using computational fluid
dynamics (CFD).
