Jamal Olatunji

Citation

Thesis Title
An Integrated Modelling Approach to Inform Package Design for Optimal Cooling of Horticultural Produce

Forced-air cooling is a widely used pre-cooling process that enables the New Zealand horticultural industry to preserve the quality of perishable exports. Package design is linked with cooling performance, as the placement and size of package ventilation can result in different airflow patterns. Mr Olatunji developed a suite of mathematical modelling tools to assist in optimising the forced-air cooling of kiwifruit, with a focus on flexibility, computational efficiency and automation. This included a geometry generation tool to automatically construct the bulk fruit model geometry, and a heat transfer model capable of rapidly predicting rates of heat transfer and temperature uniformity for a given airflow distribution. The suite of modelling tools can be used in the horticulture industry to iterate towards the optimum package design quickly, and rapidly generate models for other crops, package designs and cooling scenarios.

Supervisors
Dr Richard Love
Professor Andrew East
Dr Maria J. Ferrua