Monitoring of air flow patterns in cold storage rooms
First field test of COOL project completed
Our series of field tests that started in banana containers is now continued in cold storage rooms for apples. The first field test of the new COOL project “Flow sensor based air management in fruit and vegetable storage” was carried out at the end of October 2015 at Kompetenzzentrum Obstbau-Bodensee (KOB) in Ravensburg, Germany.
Thirty Wireless AnemoMeters (WAMs) were mounted in the gaps between the fruit boxes in a warehouse filled with 40 tons of apples. Preliminary test results include the observation that the center of vertical eddies moves with changing ventilation fan speeds.
In previous tests the signal attenuation by the high water content of the fruits was a major problem. At 2.4 GHz the communication range was limited to 0.5 meter [Jed14]. By switching to 433 MHz communication the range can be extended to more than 2 meters.
- [Jed14] Jedermann, R., Pötsch, T., Lloyd, C.: Communication techniques and challenges for wireless food quality monitoring. Transactions of the Royal Society A, Theme issue: Intelligent Food Logistics, May/June 2014, Vol. 372(2017), 20130304. DOI:
10.1098/rsta.2013.0304 [
Free Access]