CFD modeling of heat and mass transfer in a hydrofluidization system during food chilling and freezing

Abstract

Hydrofluidization (HF) is a freezing and chilling technique consisting of an unfreezable liquid pumped through orifices or nozzles into a vessel to create agitating submerged liquid jets that fluidize products. This chapter consists of a brief review of the main contributions, as part of a general strategy to programmatically increase the level of description, to the mathematical modeling of the heat and mass transfer in an HF system using CFD. A novel, state-of-the-art and validated mathematical model for the transport phenomena in an HF system is summarized in this presentation. This model can deal with three features that are very important in a food freezing process using HF: the fluidization phenomenon using CFD+DPM+DEM, the freezing process in the food, and the heat and mass transfer in the food and liquid refrigerant domains. Due its simplicity and minimal computational needs, this mathematical approach can be used as a tool to help in the designing, control, and optimization.