Abstract:
Public services are interrupted during disaster and people faced difficulties without facilities such
as electricity, sanitation, water and communication. Availability of fresh food become constraint
at the disaster and lead the people into hunger and malnutrition. Electrical power based fresh
food storage systems are unable to function at the disaster due to electricity failure. Photovoltaic
(PV) power system is a possible renewable energy which can be used to operate storage system
to increase the food availability through reducing postharvest losses by controlled through proper
maintenance of storage system. This paper addressed different relative humidity (RH) levels in
storage for increasing the self-life of vegetables such as Solanum melongena, Cucumis sativus,
Brassica oleracea, Citrus aurantifolia, Abelmoschus esculentus, Ipomoea batatas and Solanum
lycopersicum for five days along the storage room using PV power. Temperature was maintained
between 21º C and 23º C using an air conditioner machine (1500 W) with regulating different
RH levels, such as 55%, 65% and 75% of ambient air (28.8±1.1º C, 78.7±6.7%) and with three
replicates. Keeping quality of vegetables were assessed by firmness, Brix value, pH value,
weight loss percentage, Hue angle and Chroma value. Energy consumption for operating PV
powered air conditioner was 15.75 kWh in five day storage period. This power can generated by
area of 2.93 m2 solar panel under Global Horizontal Irradiation (GHI) of 1962.0 kWh/m2/year in
Dambulla (DL1) Sri Lanka. Solanum melongena in RH 65%, Brassica oleracea, Citrus
aurantifolia and Solanum lycopersicum in RH 75% were observed higher firmness value.
Cucumis sativus in RH 75% and all other vegetables in RH storage resulted lowest weight loss
percentage compared to ambient condition. Cucumis sativus, Citrus aurantifolia, Brassica
oleracea and Ipomoea batatas in RH 75% and Abelmoschus esculentus in RH 55% were
observed same value compared to pre storage Chroma values. Abelmoschus esculentus in RH
55%, Cucumis sativus in RH 75% and Brassica oleracea in RH 65% were observed higher hue
angle. Solanum lycopersicum in RH 65% were observed lowest pH value. Brassica oleracea,
Citrus aurantifolia, Solanum lycopersicum and Ipomoea batatas were observed lowest Brix
value in RH 75% condition. The results concluded that RH 65% was the better storage condition
for Solanum melongena, RH 55% for Abelmoschus esculentus and RH 75% for Cucumis sativus,
Brassica oleracea, Citrus aurantifolia, Ipomoea batatas and Solanum lycopersicum to increase
the food availability by using PV power system.
