U.S – Motive, a US-based company, has launched its new thermostat for refrigerated cars and trailers in an effort to reduce the cost of reefer operations (refrigerated transport), improve food safety standards, increase productivity, and stop food spoilage.

“Delivering ice cream at -20°F (-7°C) when it’s 90°F (32°C) degrees outside requires us to pay great attention to the conditions inside our reefers.

“Motive Reefer Monitoring enables us to set the report for every 15 mins to ensure there are no issues with the load. Having this level of visibility saves us five to ten hours per week in fleet manager productivity and prevents any spoilage,” says Marc Cain, Transportation Manager at Mayer Bros Apple Products, one of the companies using Motive’s product.

Businesses now have access to their cars’ data on a single screen, including location, vehicle telematics, and reefer insights, thanks to the temperature monitoring solution’s environmental sensor, which manages the temperature and humidity in real-time.

Motive explains that the solution also makes it possible to create reefer logs for any time period on demand without the need to visit a service center, which reduces cost, decreases reefer downtime and improves the service that fleets can provide to their own customers.

“Our strategy enables our customers to access and take actions on all of their vehicles and equipment, including refrigeration units, in a consolidated dashboard within our Automated Operations Platform.

“We then use the power of our AI capabilities to make informed decisions about how to get the most value out of those assets,” highlights Jail Ranganathan, Chief Product Officer at Motive.

The device also has the ability to remotely configure and control reefer units, which saves time and lowers the risk of human error by doing away with manual pre-cooling before a trip.

The manufacturer emphasizes how the product aids in meeting Food Safety Modernization Act regulations. The sensors also manage real-time temperature and humidity conditions.

Energy saving innovations

Saving money on energy becomes more crucial as a result of the global energy crisis and helps to ease stressed-out energy grids.

Engineers at the University of Irvine in the US created a packaging insulator material earlier this year that was modeled after squid skin.

The idea could, in the future, regulate heat with repositionable metal structures to keep beverages hot and safeguard other products.

Under certain strain levels, these metal structures can reversibly split from one another and reassemble, which could result in increased energy efficiency.

While this is going on, healthy drinks producer Innocent is conserving energy by chilling its juices in two separate heating circuits with water that has been heated using waste heat from its refrigeration facility.

Back in the US, scientists at the University of California, Davis, created jelly-based ice cubes that do not melt, are compostable, antibacterial, and stop cross-contamination in packaging for fresh foods.

The jelly-based ice cubes achieve latent heat fusion and cooling efficiency comparable to regular ice by being made of 90% water and 10% gelatin hydrogels.

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