Background

Refrigerated display cabinets are widely used to preserve chilled and frozen food products in retail food stores. Storage temperatures must be efficiently controlled to ensure that the product temperature is maintained below the recommended value. Numerous surveys have demonstrated that refrigerated display cabinets, seem to be a weak link in the food cold chain, and household practices also constitute weak links. A great deal of effort has been devoted to the investigation and improvement of the performance of cabinets in terms of both temperature homogeneity and energy efficiency.

Scope and approach

In this review article, an investigation of refrigerated display cabinet performance, from basic experimental field and laboratory studies to advanced numerical simulation, is presented. Field investigation enables knowledge of real-use conditions to be acquired and identifies problems encountered during food storage. However, such investigation is usually costly and time-consuming. The Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) approach is becoming a promising alternative used to study the influence of various design parameters and operating conditions on the cabinet performance.

Key findings and conclusions

Ambient air infiltration across air curtains is the most significant factor indicating the performance of open display cabinets. This issue is still problematic in many research and development contexts. The application of closed doors becomes an alternative solution which has been proven that it can provide several advantages. As little research involving this type of refrigeration equipment is available, thus further investigation is required in order to obtain additional data.

中文翻译：

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零售冷藏展示柜性能的实验和数值研究

背景

冷藏展示柜被广泛用于在零售食品商店中保存冷藏和冷冻食品。必须有效控制储存温度，以确保产品温度保持在建议值以下。许多调查表明，冷藏展示柜似乎是食品冷链中的薄弱环节，而家庭习惯也构成了薄弱环节。就温度均匀性和能量效率而言，已经投入了大量的精力来研究和改进机柜的性能。

范围和方法

在这篇评论文章中，对冷藏展示柜的性能进行了研究，从基础实验领域和实验室研究到高级数值模拟，一应俱全。现场调查可以获取实际使用条件的知识，并识别食品存储过程中遇到的问题。然而，这种调查通常是昂贵且费时的。计算流体动力学（CFD）方法正成为一种有前途的替代方法，用于研究各种设计参数和操作条件对机柜性能的影响。

主要发现和结论

跨气幕的空气渗透是指示敞开式展示柜性能的最重要因素。在许多研究和开发环境中，这个问题仍然是有问题的。闭门的应用成为一种替代解决方案，已被证明可以提供多种优势。由于很少有涉及此类制冷设备的研究，因此需要进一步研究以获得更多数据。