Experimental characterization and modelling of refrigeration of pork carcasses during transport under field conditions

•Experimental study of a semi-trailer loaded with half-carcasses of pork during transport.•Surface and core temperatures evolution of 8 instrumented half-carcasses were analyzed.•Convective heat transfer coefficient was identified from cooling kinetics of the carcasses.•Simplified model was proposed to predict product temperature changes during transport. Measurements of air and product temperatures were conducted at different positions in a semi-trailer loaded with 480 warm half-carcasses of pork (core temperature ∼13 °C, surface temperature ∼7 °C). The temperature evolution of 8 instrumented half-carcasses during transport show that the core temperature decreased significantly and reaches 7 °C in most of half-carcasses after 9 h, whereas all the measured temperature of product surfaces decreased to 6 °C. Analysis of the cooling kinetics of the carcasses was conducted to determine the convective heat transfer coefficient (average value 7.7 W m−2 K−1 and standard deviation 1.8 W m−2 K−1). A simplified model based on an analytical solution was proposed to predict the core and average temperature changes during transport. The required refrigerating capacity was estimated for different loading ratios of warm and cold carcasses (Tc of 15 °C and 7 °C, respectively) in a semi-trailer. It was shown that the studied semi-trailer had sufficient refrigerating capacity to evacuate the heat, whatever the ratio of warm carcasses.