Forced-convective cooling of citrus fruit: Cooling conditions and energy consumption in relation to package design

•The new package designs showed an improved cooling rate and cooling uniformity.•The new package designs reduce the energy load due to their lower aerodynamic resistance.•Package design is a cost-effective way for improving forced-convective precooling.•Basic information on the packages was obtained to guide future cold-chain design decisions. The performance of an existing container for orange fruit and two new designs, stacked on a pallet, has been evaluated for forced-convective precooling using computational fluid dynamics. The focus was on the fruit cooling rate and the system energy consumption in relation to cooling conditions (airflow rate and cooling temperature). The new package designs both showed an improved cooling rate and cooling uniformity, although this improvement is to some extent dependent on the cooling system that is used, which should also be taken into account when evaluating package design. The energy required to maintain airflow through the containers during the precooling process was also less for the new containers due to their lower aerodynamic resistance. These new containers seem a cost-effective way for improving forced-convective precooling of orange fruit with respect to throughput, fruit quality and operational cost of the system. In this study, basic information on the containers was obtained to guide future cold-chain design decisions and changes to existing cooling protocols or cooling systems.