To design a cold room I need to know the specific heat above freezing in kJ/kgK and the latent heat in kJ/kgK.

Question

I have been asked by a client to design a cold room for the storage of bread fruit. To make the design accurate I need to know the Specific heat above freezing in kJ/kgK and the latent heat in kJ/kgK. Can you help me find this information? (S.M.)

Answer

For refrigeration load calculations you can use a specific heat of 3.8 kJ/kg-°C. This number does vary slightly between different products based primarily on water content, but it is accurate enough, considering the difficulty in determining other factors in the calculations , such as hourly fruit input, incoming product temperature, rate of product cooling, etc. I do not have data on latent heat of bread fruit. Please visit for a good primer on food freezing. –