Temperature prediction in a refrigerated display cabinet: deterministic and stochastic approaches

The product temperature in the refrigerated display cabinets is very variable and it influences directly the safety and quality of the food products. This variability is due to the type of display cabinet (vertical, horizontal), the position of the product inside the equipment, the fluctuation of the ambient air temperature in the supermarkets (day/night, opening hours, seasons, air conditioning etc.) and the surrounding condition of the display cabinet (in front of another refrigerated display cabinet or in front of grocery products) etc. This study proposes a thermal model to predict the load temperature in an open vertical display cabinet in function of two random parameters: ambient temperature in the supermarket and radiation temperature of the surrounding walls. The knowledge of the probability density of these parameters, from field measurements or expert knowledge, allows predicting the variability of the product temperatures inside the display cabinet.