Design and application of a novel cold chain pallet using a phase change material

The refrigerated transport vehicles and the high operating costs consisting of energy consumption and manual labour. A novel cold chain pallet incorporating water as a phase change material (PCM) has been designed. When in use, the PCM pallet is put into a cold store and the water is frozen. In transportation, the foods are stored in an insulated vehicle along with PCM pallets. The latent heat of water is used to maintain the temperature inside the vehicle. Air temperature inside the carriage was measured for different PCM mass (100, 200, 300 kg), different time (24, 48, 72h), with and without forced convection. The experimental results show that the time the air temperature was <10ºC was 66.3%, 92.1% and 94.7% of the duration without forced convection and 92.5%, 97.3% and 98.6% with forced convection, when the PCM mass was 100, 200 and 300 kg respectively. Because no special refrigeration system is needed and the number of PCM pallets can be selected according to the required cooling capacity, the initial investment and operating costs of PCM pallets is much lower than existing refrigerated trucks. Copyright © IIF/IIR. Published with the authorization of the International Institute of Refrigeration (IIR): www.iifiir.org