DETERMINATION OF TEMPERATURE DISTRIBUTIONS AND HEAT-TRANSFER RATES DURING PRECOOLING OF SPHERICAL FOODSTUFFS

This paper presents both the experimental and theoretical results on the temperature distribution and heat transfer rate during hydrocooling, a precooling method, of tomatoes as spherical products. Temperature values measured at the center and mass-average of the products were converted to the dimensionless form to obtain the dimensionless temperature distributions and variations of heat transfer rate. The theoretical dimensionless temperature values and heat transfer rates were computed with a mathematical model using the method of separation of variables according to the boundary condition of third kind in the transient heat transfer, due to the Biot number lies between 0 and 100. These measured and computed dimensionless temperature distributions and heat transfer rates were compared and a good agreement was found.