Aplicación del método de elementos finitos utilizando una formulación entálpica y de Kirchhoff para el modelado matemático de la congelación de champiñones.

SANTOS M.V.; LESPINARD A.; MASCHERONI R.; CALIFANO A.; ZARITZKY NOEMI.

Buenos Aires

Congreso; MECOM del Bicentenario MECOM 2010 IX Argentine Congress on Computational Mechanics and II South American Congress on Computational Mechanics- CILAMCE 2010 XXXI Iberoamerican Congress of Computational Methods in Engineering,; 2010

Asociacion Argentina de Mecanica Computacional

Mushrooms are widely commercialized products which are very susceptible to enzymatic browning. Therefore their short shelf-life makes their preservation a crucial task. Freezing of previously blanched mushrooms, either whole or sliced, is a common process to obtain longer durability. A numerical model using the finite element technique was applied to predict freezing times of mushrooms considering the actual shape of the product. The original heat transfer equation was reformulated using a combined enthalpy and Kirchhoff formulation in order to obtain accurate numerical results and enhance the computational speed of the program. A three dimensional geometry was used to describe the sliced mushroom shape. Digital image reconstruction was used to obtain the irregular contour of the food product. The numerical predictions agreed with the experimental time-temperature curves during freezing of mushrooms in a tunnel (maximum absolute error < 3.2ºC). The codes were applied to determine the required processing times for different operating conditions with minimum computational efforts.