Application of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) in refrigerating chambers: review and perspectives

Trabalho de Conclusão de Curso (Graduação)Advances in the food sector allows people to have at their home a variety of food, but for this to happen, in a country as large as Brazil, sometimes the food needs to be transported a long way in a road by a truck. The cold chain, is used to maintain the quality and increase the shelf life of perishables foods. In order to keep the cold chain, the trucks need to maintain the optimal temperature throughout the transportation. Therefore, the aim of this study was to make a literature review of the use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to simulate a refrigerated truck. CFD simulations can be performed to solve many refrigeration problems, such as to analyze the refrigeration unit, inlet and outlet positions, airflow, temperature, cargo design and air curtains. For this purpose, characteristics of the system and consequently the truck must be well known to determine the governing equations, boundary and initial conditions and others parameters needed. Furthermore, studies showed that software FLUENT (ANSYS, Inc.) is the most used in the simulations of refrigerated trucks. Altogether more studies can be made with loaded trucks, different configurations and including more external factors. Studies showed that the maintainance of cold chain still have deficiencies and the use of CFD can help to improve the positioning of inlet, outlet and air courtains, the refrigeration unit and the cargo configuration inside the truck

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