Diseño y construcción de cámara climática controlada para reproducir episodios de transporte de mercancías perecederas

Abstract

The need to analyze food quality loss has been increasing in recent times due to the increasingly restrictive traceability conditions in the different distribution stages of perishable products. The availability of tools to estimate the quality losses in these logistic phases would help to reduce the waste of food, often discarded due to inadequate preservation conditions. The objective of the project, where this work is framed, is to obtain quality-losses indicators of commodities when they are exposed to undesired thermal variations. These indicators would provide qualitative values of the quality of the perishable merchandise by estimating variations in the shelf life of the commodities. As part of this project, a portable climatic chamber has been designed and built in which controlled thermal cycles can be reproduced during the shelf life of the commodity and, in this way, different quality parameters can be evaluated and related to the preservation conditions. Due to the high number of tests required to obtain reliable indicators, this work proposes the design of an easily reproducible and scalable low-cost chamber where it is feasible to subject the perishable product to controlled thermal alterations during the commercial life of the commodity, and to obtain a dynamic shelf-life as a function of variations in climatic conditions. This work deals with the design, sizing, instrumentation and the different elements that make up the control system, as well as the identification and adjustment of the controller. The results and conclusions show that the controlled climatic chamber developed in this paper, is a useful tool to obtain indicators of quality losses under different climatic conditions.