Cooling Apples and Pears in Storage Rooms

Excerpts from the report: This report covers work conducted under a long-range research project centered at the Wenatchee, Wash., field office of the Transportation and Facilities Research Division, Agricultural Marketing Service, to improve the operation and design of cold storage houses for apples and other tree fruits. This study was designed to: (1) Determine the characteristic or half-cooling time required for apples and pears when room cooling is done; (2) evaluate the effect of various types of packaging methods, stacking methods, and air velocities through the stacks on the half-cooling time; (3) determine "approach temperatures" between cooled fruit and air, and their relation to characteristic cooling time; (4) determine the factors affecting the uniformity of fruit temperature during storage; (5) evaluate the performance of various types of air distribution systems on the basis of uniformity; (6) investigate the economic factors associated with various types of air distribution systems. The "approach temperature" is the difference between temperatures of the air and the fruit after stability has been reached; the fruit temperature then normally remains slightly higher than the temperature of the cooling air.