Experimental investigation of the performance of cool storage shelf for vertical open refrigerated display cabinet

In order to improve the performance of refrigerated display cabinet, decrease the food temperature, improve the uniformity of food temperature and restrain the temperature fluctuation during the defrosting time, a new kind of composite shelf is designed for the food vertical open refrigerated display cabinet (VORDC), which is based on the heat pipe technology and the cool storage characteristics of phase change materials (PCMs) among the heat pipes. Experimental results show that the novel composite shelf can enhance the heat transfer between food and shelf, reduce the core temperature of food, decrease temperature fluctuation in defrosting process and reduce the temperature difference along height, width and depth direction. Compared with the normal shelf, the temperature differences of food packages on both sides of the composite shelves (RT3, RT4 and RT5) are reduced by 40%, 80% and 40%, respectively. The average temperature of food packages is reduced by 13.7-32% and the temperature fluctuation of food packages is reduced by 53.3-83.3% during defrosting. For these kinds of composite shelves, the temperature of food packages of RT4 composite shelf is lowest, and the average temperature of food packages at each layers and rows are controlled in 5 °C. This novel composite shelve can effectively reduce the temperature rise during defrosting, and improve the performance of VORDC obviously.