Fractal calculus for refrigerated transportation of perishable foods: Energy consumption and energy saving

Abstract

This paper studies the frozen pork transportation in short and long distances, the loss of cooling capacity and the energy consumption in the cold chain transportation are analyzed experimentally and numerically. It finds that the material for freezer insulation plays in important role in energy consumption and energy saving during refrigerated transportation, an optimal freezer can reduce temperature rise by 13.88% and the heat flow by 71.05% compared with the traditional ones. A fractal model is established to reveal the thermal property of the freezer.