ANALYSIS OF COOLING PERFORMANCE OF SLOW AIR, AIR BLAST AND WATER IMMERSION COOLING METHODS FOR COOKED MEATS BY FINITE ELEMENT METHOD

摘要

In the cooked meat industry, the cooking and cooling processes are used to produce a safe product of required texture and sensory properties with economic yield. For safety and quality, the cooked meat should be rapid cooled immediately after removal from the cooking process to minimise the growth of surviving organisms. It is important to evaluate the present cooling performance in the cooked meat industry to determine whether the rapid cooling requirement can be met or not and to assess the necessity to introduce some novel cooling technologies. A finite element method has been used to evaluate the cooling performance of slow air, air blast and water immersion cooling methods in the cooked meat industry. The variations in physical properties of cooked meats and operating conditions during cooling process are considered in the model. Moisture loss rate was considered in the model to account for the weight loss during slow air and air blast cooling. A user-friendly computer program developed by the authors is used to solve the model. The model is validated by comparing the numerical solutions with the experimental results. The comparison shows that the predicted and experimental core temperatures are in a good agreement.