Prediction of Aircooling Characteristics of Moist Food Products
ABSTRACT AN analysis of the aircooling characteristics of food products is presented. The coupled effects of heat and moisture transfer at the product surface are taken into account. The one-dimensional heat conduction equation in rectangular, spherical and cylindrical coor-dinates is solved using finite difference technique. The variation of product temperature with time is obtained in dimensionless form in terms of Biot number, wet bulb temperature of cooling air and initial product temper-ature. Typical results are presented in the form of charts. To facilitate quick estimation of cooling characteristics, correlations are obtained for the time variation of temperature as a function of the governing parameters. The theoretical predictions yield good agreement with experimentally determined time-temperature histories.