Development of Evaporative Cooling Transportation System for Perishable Commodities

An evaporative cooling(EC) system suitable for vehicles used for transportation of perishable agricultural produce was developed and evaluated for its performance with respect to three pad materials (wood-wool, coconut coir and wood shaving), three pad thicknesses (50, 100 and 150 mm) and three pad densities (15, 20, and 25 kg.m⁻³). It was observed that for all the pad densities and thicknesses, the wood-wool pad material gave significantly higher temperature drop, higher increase in relative humidity and better saturation efficiency as compared to coconut coir and wood shaving pad material. The difference between coconut coir and wood shaving was non-significant.