Design and Performance Experiment of a Combined Cold Storage Plate Refrigerated Container Based on Phase Change Material

Abstract

The cold chain is a critical component in the transportation of food and pharmaceuticals, with refrigerated transportation equipment representing a significant sector within this domain. This article presents a design scheme aimed at achieving uniform temperature and extended cold storage duration to enhance the performance of combined cold storage plate refrigerated containers. Utilizing the principles of combined cold storage, we designed the combined cold storage plates and the refrigerated container. We compared the performance of various phase change materials (PCMs)—specifically 2-octanone, n-undecane, n-tetradecane, and water—from the perspectives of equal mass combination schemes and equal phase change latent heat value schemes. Our findings indicate that the equal mass combination scheme, which employs n-tetradecane as the inner layer and water as the outer layer, exhibits superior performance. Additionally, we evaluated the effective cold preservation time, melting time, minimum temperature, uniformity coefficient, and cold power consumption of the combined cold storage plates in different placement configurations (side placement and diagonal placement) within the refrigerated container. The results demonstrate that the refrigerated container utilizing the equal mass combination scheme with n-tetradecane and water in a diagonal placement configuration performs optimally. This experimental conclusion serves as a reference for advancing the application of combined cold storage plate refrigerated containers in ultra-low-temperature control.