Excellence in Dynamic Controlled Atmosphere Storage Based on the Respiratory Quotient: Leakage correction

The RQ of stored apple fruit was shown to be calculable directly from measured changes in gas partial pressures of the storage atmosphere only if the storage facility is perfectly gastight. If not, the measured changes in gas partial pressures used to calculate RQ must be corrected for the gas flows between storage facility and environment due to leakage. A leakage correction to correct measured changes in respiratory gasses in the storage facility was developed. The leakage correction was experimentally validated and was found to be able to predict changes in the gas partial pressure due to leakage as accurate as the resolution of the sensors used to measure the gas constitution (0.01 kPa). The leakage correction was implemented in C++ and integrated in the recently developed automated RQ-DCA control software for real-time application of the RQ leakage correction in a storage container for ‘Golden Delicious’ apples. It was shown that RQ estimations without leakage correction are only reliable during decreasing internal pressure of the storage facility i.e. when the composition of the storage atmosphere is not altered by the leakage, while the RQ estimation with leakage correction was able to estimate the RQ of the stored fruit in all circumstances.status: accepte