Vol. 11, Special Issue 7 (2022)

Author(s):
Anusuya Eswaran, Shadanan Patel, Trishla Sahu and Suman Sahu

Abstract:
Storage and transportation losses are one of the major causes in post harvest losses. Small scale peasants and vegetable vendors have difficulty in storing and preserving the quality of the harvested or purchased agricultural produce before it reaches in the hands of the consumers. Cost effective easy to handle and less maintenance requiring storage unit is needed for using in remote areas. Solar photovoltaic assisted evaporative cooling vegetable vending cart has been developed in Swami Vivekanand College of Agriculture Engineering & Technology, Raipur for storing and selling of agricultural produce in small scale for vegetable vendors. The developed vegetable vending cart consists of cooling cabinet unit, water distribution system and power supply unit. Honey comb cellulose pad is used as cooling pad. The performance of the cooling unit was analyzed based on the saturation efficiency under load and no-load condition observed in March and August along with the physiochemical quality of the vegetables placed inside the cabinet and under ambient condition. The overall efficiency in cooling is 88% and the maximum temperature and relative humidity drop was 14 °C and 40% respectively. Physiochemical analysis is performed for tomato and bittergourd and the parameters observed are physiological weight loss, total titratable acids, total soluble solids, pH, firmness and color. The tomatoes and bittergourd placed inside the cabinet retained shelf life upto 19 and 9 days respectively. The tomatoes and bittergourd stored under ambient condition are storable upto 10 and 6 days respectively. The physiochemical changes are observed to be much faster in ambient condition than cabinet. The results obtained highlights that there is significant difference between the ambient and cabinet condition and the developed vegetable vending cart is efficient in storing and transporting the vegetables. Saturation efficiency recorded indicates that cellulose serves as an efficient cooling pad material. Sensory evaluation of the samples placed inside the cooling cabinet and ambient condition yielded a result that the marketable qualities were sustained inside the cooling cabinet. The economic analysis showed that a profit of Rs 6,000 was obtained on selling using evaporative cooling vegetable vending cart.