Performance of Clay Pot in Pot Refrigerator

Abstract, Inetrnational Journal of Engineering, 2020

Evaporative cooling is a well-known system to be an efficient and economical means for reducing the temperature and increasing the relative humidity in an enclosure and this effect has been extensively tried for increasing the shelf life of agricultural produce in some tropical and subtropical countries. This method is employed in pot in pot refrigerator but with problem of efficiency due to some parameters that affect it’s performance. To improve the performance of it, absorbent material such as sand, jute, charcoal, jute and sand, charcoal and sawdust were used in the experiment to see how they affect the cooling rate of the zeer pot. Inner and ambient temperatures, humidity, wind speed were measured and the efficiency of each absorbent used were calculated. The results of the experiments show that the lowest temperature and highest efficiency of sand, jute, charcoal, jute and sand, coconut fibre and sawdust are 170C and 99.78%, 180C and 97.94%, 10.780C and 97.51%, 180C and 97.39%, 100C and 99.80%, and 12.60C and 99.20%, 180C and 97.94% respectively. From the results, coconut fibre has the lowest temperature reduction and highest efficiency, followed by charcoal and the least is Jute. Temperature difference between ambient and the inner temperature ranges between 7.4–11.2oC, 7.4–11.4oC, 7.4–11.3oC, 7.4–11.2oC, 5.4–11.1oC and 10.6–11.0oC for sand, jute, charcoal, jute and sand, coconut fibre and sawdust respectively.

Keywords: evaporative cooling, absorbent material, sand, jute, charcoal and sawdust