Modelling of fish refrigeration using flake ice.
Abstract A cooling experiment using flake ice was carried out on a stack of fish and a PVC plate in an expanded polystyrene box. The experiment on fish makes it possible to determine the cooling kinetics of the product according to its position and to validate the models which predict the product temperature changes with time. The first model is based on 2D Computational Fluid Dynamics and the second one is a 1D analytical model. To take into account the imperfect contact between the product and the flake ice due to the presence of air, an additional heat-resistant layer with an equivalent thickness between the fish and the flake ice was identified. This thickness depends on the size of the flakes and the air spaces between the flakes. Simple correlations to predict the cooling times of fish located at the bottom of the stack, where the cooling rate is the slowest, were proposed as a function of the stack thickness.