Heat and mass transfer modeling of microwave infrared cooking of zucchini based on Lambert law

Abstract

In this study, the change in the temperature and moisture content of zucchini cooked in microwave and infrared combination oven were modeled by finite element method. The exact form of Lambert law was used to predict the microwave power. Experimental temperature data at different positions of zucchini and moisture content data were used to verify the models obtained for different microwave (10, 30, and 50%) and infrared power (10, 40, and 70%) combinations for 600 s. Measured data and the model were in good agreement with an average root mean square error of 5.66°C for temperature and 2.52% for moisture content. The effects of microwave and infrared powers on rate of heat and mass transfer of zucchini were analyzed. Practical Applications Microwave–infrared combination heating offers considerably faster heating with main disadvantage of hot and cold spots. By the help of mathematical explanation of systems, these problems can be eliminated. In this research, coupled three‐dimensional finite element model was developed to simulate heat and mass transfer of zucchini cooked in microwave and infrared combination oven. The microwave power was predicted by the Lambert law. In addition, this study presented the effect of microwave and infrared power on rate of heat and mass transfer of zucchini and the variation of temperature with respect to position in the zucchini sample.

Determination and comparison of effective moisture diffusivity of carrot (core and cortex) during hot air drying

“…Finite element method (FEM) is a powerful numerical technique that was used to simulate phenomena in food processing such as heat and/or mass transfer, internal stress distribution, as well as chemical and biological processes (Ashtiani et al, 2019; Chiang et al, 2017; Hao et al, 2017; Vishwakarma et al, 2022). FEM also used to simulate the drying process to explore the drying mechanisms for optimizing the design of the drying devices as well as the drying conditions (Kamali et al, 2021; Nachaisin et al, 2016; Puangsuwan et al, 2021; Yazicioglu et al, 2021). The more accurate the simulation parameters are, the more realistic the drying results are obtained by the FEM (Chen et al, 2020).…”