Evaporation cooling of potatoes in small naturally ventilated chambers.

Short duration (1-3 days) experiments were carried out on evaporative cooling of potatoes, using metallic evaporative cooling chambers (covering the outer walls with wet cloth), with a view to finalize design details for scaling up to 10 t capacity. Results showed that the rate of cooling during a 24 h period increased in proportion to the increase in surface area of evaporation up to 80%; further increases in the surface area of evaporation to 100% did not show any additional cooling due to direct solar radiation. At the end of 24 h cooling, the temp. dropped to 22.1 from 38.0