Abstract: The objective of this study was to explore the effect of the vent mode of corrugated boxes universally used in the market on the precooling performance of layered peaches and to determine the functional relationship between the precooling environmental parameters and the precooling efficiency and the optimal vent mode under different differential pressure pre-cooling working conditions in order to realize the rapid energy-saving precooling of peaches after harvest. A numerical model of heat and mass transfer during differential pressure precooling with circular and rectangular vents (abbreviated as CV and RV, respectively) was established based on computational fluid dynamics. By comparing and analyzing the experimental and simulated data, it was found that the maximum root mean square error and mean absolute percentage error between the two vent designs were 0.799 ℃ and 6.6%, respectively, which fully verified that this numerical model had high prediction accuracy. Through in-depth exploration of the temperature and flow field distribution in different vent modes, it was found that CV exhibited inferior precooling uniformity when compared with RV. Nevertheless, CV demonstrated a notable reduction in precooling time by 30%–40% and a decrease in fan energy consumption by 50%. Additionally, their relationships with differential pressure were described by. Based on these obtained results, the precooling quality of peaches could be improved by using RV, and the precooling cost could be reduced by using CV. To simultaneously achieve these two goals, the diameter of CV should be greater than 35 mm. This study provides a theoretical reference for the reasonable selection of vent parameters and accurate monitoring of fruit precooling performance in small and medium-sized orchards.

Key words: peach; differential pressure precooling; vent mode; precooling performance; numerical simulation; computational fluid dynamics