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Cited by 96Food Supply Chain TraceabilityPostharvest Quality and Shelf Life ManagementSmart Agriculture and AI

Design of a Smart IoT-Based Control System for Remotely Managing Cold Storage Facilities

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Mohammed, Maged, Riad, Khaled, Alqahtani, Nashi·2022·Sensors
DOI 10.3390/s22134680PMC PMC9269591
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Abstract

Cold storage is deemed one of the main elements in food safety management to maintain food quality. The temperature, relative humidity (RH), and air quality in cold storage rooms (CSRs) should be carefully controlled to ensure food quality and safety during cold storage. In addition, the components of CSR are exposed to risks caused by the electric current, high temperature surrounding the compressor of the condensing unit, snow and ice accumulation on the evaporator coils, and refrigerant gas leakage. These parameters affect the stored product quality, and the real-time sending of warnings is very important for early preemptive actionability against the risks that may cause damage to the components of the cold storage rooms. The IoT-based control (IoT-BC) with multipurpose sensors in food technologies presents solutions for postharvest quality management of fruits during cold storage. Therefore, this study aimed to design and evaluate a IoT-BC system to remotely control, risk alert, and monitor the microclimate parameters, i.e., RH, temperature, CO2, C2H4, and light and some operating parameters, i.e., the temperature of the refrigeration compressor, the electrical current, and the energy consumption for a modified CSR (MCSR). In addition, the impacts of the designed IoT-BC system on date fruit quality during cold storage were investigated compared with a traditional CSR (TCSR) as a case study. The results showed that the designed IoT-BC system precisely controlled the MCSR, provided reliable data about the interior microclimate atmosphere, applied electrical current and energy consumption of the MCSR, and sent the necessary alerts in case of an emergency based on real-time data analytics. There was no significant effect of the storage time on the most important quality attributes for stored date fruit in the MCSR compared with the TCSR. As a result, the MCSR maintained high-quality attributes of date fruits during cold storage. Based on the positive impact of the designed IoT-BC system on the MCSR and stored fruit quality, this modification seems quite suitable for remotely managing cold storage facilities.

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  • The sensors used in the study (DHT22 temperature/RH, DX-250 pH, LM35 temperature, VH400 volumetric soil moisture, MQ-135 air quality, and FUT3101 light intensity) were calibrated using the same techniques described in previous studies to ensure their accuracy.

    “The sensors used in this study, i.e., the digital DHT22 temperature and RH sensor, the analog DX-250 pH sensor, the analog LM35 temperature sensor, the analog VH400 volumetric soil moisture content sensor, the analog MQ-135 air quality sensor, and the FUT3101 light intensity sensor module were calibrated using the same techniques described in previous studies [48,60,66] to ensure their accuracy”

    From Design and Evaluation of a Smart Ex Vitro Acclimatization System for Tissue Culture Plantlets (2022) · cites this paper as [60]

    Section 2.3 (page unavailable) describes calibrating a DHT22 temperature/RH sensor against an incubator, and Section 3.1 reports that calibration met the study’s accuracy criteria. The source also describes reference-instrument calibration for other sensors, but it does not describe calibrating the listed DX-250, LM35, VH400, MQ-135, or FUT3101 models. It therefore supports the DHT22 example and the general calibration approach, not the attribution of techniques for the full sensor list. (LLM, conf=0.86)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

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Authors
Mohammed, M., Riad, K., & Alqahtani, N.
Affiliations
  • King Faisal University (SA)
  • Zagazig University (EG)
Corresponding author
Mohammed, Maged
ORCID
Venue
Sensors
Publisher
MDPI AG
Published
2022-06-21
Volume
22
Issue
13
Pages
4680
ISSN
1424-8220 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.3390/s22134680
PMC
PMC9269591
OpenAlex
W4283383639
Cited by
96
References
61
Citations by year
2026: 25 · 2025: 29 · 2024: 19 · 2023: 21 · 2022: 2
FWCI
9.44
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Sensors (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
Funders
King Faisal University (AN00069)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Food Science › Food Supply Chain Traceability
  • Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Plant Science › Postharvest Quality and Shelf Life Management
  • Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Plant Science › Smart Agriculture and AI
Keywords
cold storage, remote monitoring, date fruit, postharvest quality, microclimate monitoring, temperature and relative humidity, refrigeration compressors, energy consumption, risk alerts, food safety
MeSH terms
Atmosphere, Fruit, Microclimate, Temperature, Food Quality

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