A review of numerical models of airflow in refrigerated food applications

Temperature homogeneity in most food refrigeration systems is directly governed by the airflow patterns in the system. Numerical modelling of airflow provides an opportunity to develop improved understanding of the underlying phenomena influencing system performance, which can lead to reduced temperature heterogeneity and increased effectiveness and efficiency of refrigeration systems. With the rapid advances in computational power of recent years, the use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) techniques in this application has become popular. This paper reviews the application of CFD and other numerical modelling techniques to the prediction of airflow in refrigerated food applications including cool stores, transport equipments and retail display cabinets.