A mixed method of studying heat transfer of cans to modify the Time-temperature programing of industrial retorts

Thermal sterilization is one of the most common ways of food preservation, being performed in large industrial scales. The heat treatment efficiency of each product is mostly designed based on the experience, which could certainly cause high amounts of energy dissipation. Having a sufficient knowledge of the heat transfer procedure during processing could result in Optimization of Time-temperature programing of retorts. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is an efficient way to study flow behavior and temperature distribution of thermal processing in food technology. This study, introduces some mixed techniques of simulation and modelling to study the heat treatment in thermal sterilization of cans. The method is based on the unsteady heat transfer simulation of a can located in the retort, finding the slowest heating point (SHP) by ranking the inner grids based on temperature values and afterwards, modelling the Time-temperature profile of the can by using the graphical method of Simpson which can lead the study to modify the Time-temperature programing of the retorts.

Keywords:

canning , Computational fluids dynamics , heat transfer , retort