This paper investigates how refrigerated display cabinet airflow design can enhance temperaturedistribution and potentially reduce food waste. Conventional refrigerated retail cabinets have asingle column of cold air from the top to the bottom of the merchandising envelope. By contrastseparating the retail space into individual cells, each with its own shorter air-curtain reducesinfiltration and improves temperature control.The quality and safety of bagged salad over an extended display period was evaluated in aconventional and multiple short air-curtain cabinet. At the end of the test period there was a visibledifference in cabinet temperature and relative humidity, which had a direct impact on the saladorganoleptic quality and microbiological safety. The temperature band was 11.2°C and 5.4°C in theconventional and multiple air curtain cabinets respectively, resulting in a higher degree of saladwilting and shrivelling and an increase on total yeast counts on the conventional cabinet.
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