Analysis of the influence of the opening and closing of the loading docks on the cooling energy demand of a large-sized industrial warehouse used for storing fruit and vegetables

Resumen

This article investigates the influence that the infiltration of external air through the loading docks has on the energetic cooling demand of an industrial cooling unit of big dimensions used for storing perishable food. For this purpose, a model of the industrial unit in two different energetic simulation software, CLIMA and TRNSYS17, was developed. The values of the parameters analysed were introduced depending on the possibilities software bring. Forcing functions, previously obtained, were used as inputs to the model to represent the values of the parameters. All these data put together allow to estimate how this thermal load affect to the energetic cooling demand. A logical thought is that a greater thermal load due to the infiltration of external air implicate a bigger energetic cooling demand. Actually, the results show this but the percentual variation of the effect of the thermal load analysed, in a separated way or put together, has more interest than the quantitative results. Besides, check how the results change depending the software used is also an interesting matter.