eng Science and Education Publishing Journal of Food and Nutrition Research 2333-1240 2014-09-03 2 9 567 574 10.12691/jfnr-2-9-7 JFNR2014297 article Enhai Liu 1 Tingting Yu 1 Shengyong Liu ndshyliu@163.com 2 Hongwei Liu 2 School of Energy and Building Environment Engineering, Henan University of Urban Construction, Pingdingshan, China Key Laboratory of Renewable Energy of Ministry of Agriculture, Henan Agricultural University, Zhengzhou, China We report a joint theoretical and experiment analysis of an industrial cold-storage unit for a large-scale poultry processing enterprise in the Central Plains Economic Zone of China. The flow field inside the unit was analyzed using computational fluid dynamics, which identified an optimum forced air supply of 2.05 m s-1. The defrosting cycle was then optimized experimentally, resulting in an improved defrosting method and a monthly saving of 5,530 RMB in electricity costs. Furthermore, we achieved a reduction in the temperature variation of 1.82% and in the coefficient of performance variation of 1.89%. The refrigerating capacity and electricity costs per unit of production were decreased by 8.30% and 10.20%, respectively. http://pubs.sciepub.com/jfnr/2/9/7/jfnr-2-9-7.pdf cold storage numerical simulation flow-field characteristics defrosting cycle optimization