Today, almost half of the cultivated products are lost before they even reach the consumption stage. Data show that one-third of food never reaches the end consumer. It is known that 50% of these losses are caused by technical errors related to control and temperature management. Reducing post-harvest losses will play an important role in the sustainable feeding of the world's population in the future. From this point of view, preventing or at least minimizing the loss of fresh fruits and vegetables has become an important issue. Cold storage with petroleum fuels and electrical energy is costly and causes environmental pollution. Recently, phase change material (PCM), which is a clean, environmentally friendly and renewable energy source, is an interesting material in this field. PCM s are capable of storing the ambient heat as latent heat energy and returning the latent heat energy they have stored during temperature rises and falls to the environment. With a PCM with the right phase change temperature range, it can provide maximum energy savings and an economical storage system by working as low and high temperature barriers, as well as an environmentally friendly cooling that reduces carbon emissions. This study is a compilation research examining the storage with thermal energy storage, which is a new generation, energy-saving environmentally friendly method, which includes PCMs that can be preferred for cold storage of fruits and vegetables after harvest.

One of the storage conditions affecting quality of food stuffs due to short shelf life is temperature. Thermal insulation can be achieved by adding phase change materials (PCMs) to packaging materials. PCMs store and release latent heat of phase change during melting and crystallization operations, respectively. Thus, they can provide thermal protection for packaged foods. The aim of this study is to prepare new food packaging materials poly (ethylene terephthalate)–poly (ethylene glycol) (PET–PEG) multiblock copolymers as solid–solid phase change materials (SSPCM) as potential food packaging materials with thermal energy storage (TES) property. Polyesterification was carried out with PEG at different average molecular weights (1000, 4000 and 10,000 g/mol), ethylene glycol (EG) and terephthaloyl chloride (TPC). Synthesized PET–PEG multiblock copolymers were characterized using Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) methods. The crystal structures of PET–PEG multiblock copolymers were characterized by polarized optical microscopy (POM) and their surface properties were determined by performing contact angle tests. TES capacity of the PET–PEG multiblock copolymers was found in range of 26.1–150.5 J/g. Consequently, this study demonstrates the potential of PET–PEG multiblock copolymers suitable for effective thermal preservation in packaging material applications to maintain the quality of packaged food stuffs.

No abstract

No abstract

Poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) polymer is useful as phase change material (PCM) in thermal energy storage systems. In this study, PEG 1000 and clove essential oil (EO) blended with various mass ratios (100/100/25, 150/100/25, 200/100/25) PEG/PLA/EO nanofibers were produced by electrospinning in a poly(lactic acid) (PLA) polymer matrix. The produced nanofibers were characterized by scanning electronic microscopy (SEM), fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The fibers were about 370°C and prepared nanofibers have a phase enthalpy of 77.48 Jg-1 at 34.74°C. Nanofibers shows promising potential for use in medical, food safety and textile fields.