Simulation of the Heat Transfer Process Coupled with Protein Denaturation during Thermal Treatment of Crabs

J.B.DIMA , P.J. BARÓN, N.E. ZARITZKY

Santiago de Chile

Congreso; XXV Interamerican Congress of Chemical Engineering; 2011

Interamerican Confederation of Chemical Engineering

Crabs species such as the Southern Ocean swimming crab Ovalipes trimaculatus and the Patagonian stone crab Platyxanthus patagonicus are considered fishing resources of commercial value in Argentina. Although the commercialization of crabs is incipient in Argentina, in the last years it began to generate interest due to the consumer acceptance of the crab meat. As established by the Codex Alimentarius, crabs must stay alive until processing, since after death, their meat undergoes fast irreversible alterations of enzymatic, chemical and microbiological origins. Crab cooking is a key processing step to obtain quality products. While the thermal treatment must be sufficient to denature muscle proteins, facilitating meat detachment from the crab shell, excessive heat exposure is associated to texture deterioration. The objectives of the present work were: a) to mathematically simulate the energy transfer during the thermal process of crabs using a finite element computational code; b) to determine the denaturation kinetics of proteins during heating c) to establish the degree of denaturation achievedby the myofibrillar proteins during the heating process by coupling the protein denaturation kinetics, the activation energies and the thermal penetration curves