Fewer wasted bananas

By Nina E. Tveter

Each year 2000 tonnes of bananas are ruined when transported to Norway. A doctoral thesis from NTNU may reduce the waste.

Large quantities of bananas and other kinds of fruit are ruined on their way from the exporting country to the consumer. The reason is insufficient refrigeration on board cargo ships. Ragnhild Lindqvist, at the Department of Refrigeration and Air Conditioning at NTNU, has discovered some of the reasons for this and has made a full-scale model of a cargo hold and filled it with banana boxes and pallets.

Lindqvist's research shows that the crucial thing is the way in which the pallets are stacked in the hold. Strange as it may seem, refrigerated air is distributed more evenly in the cargo hold if the pallets are stacked with their short ends pointing towards the refrigeration unit.

Cargo holds on board ships are provided with perforated floors. Refrigerated air pours in from under the floor and is subsequently pushed up through the cargo. Nowadays, banana boxes are transported into the cargo holds on pallets. This complicates the distribution of air further. Lindqvist believes that it might be a better solution to abandon perforated floors and rather use the ducts which exist naturally inside the pallets when new cargo ships are designed.

In addition, Lindqvist's doctoral thesis reveals that there is a large potential for improvement in the development of new packaging. The results from the cargo-hold model were tested on the Kameleon computer simulation program (which has been developed at SINTEF Energy Research). The lab results matched the computer simulations well. This demonstrates that simulation tools are well suited to design work on refrigerated cargo holds.

* Contact: Ragnhild Lindqvist
Tel: + 47 32 21 51 20
E-mail: rli@industriplan.no