SIMPLIFIED AND ACCURATE MATHEMATICAL-MODEL FOR THE ANALYSIS OF HEAT AND MOISTURE TRANSFER FROM FOOD COMMODITIES

The present paper deals with a simple and accurate mathematical model for making reliable heat and mass transfer analyses from high-water-co ntent solids when exposed to a cold air stream. Such physical situatio ns are encountered in the refrigeration industry during air blast cool ing of food commodities. The concept of enthalpy potential has been us ed to develop a simple linear surface boundary condition equation. Thi s equation accounts for the cooling effect dice to sensible convective heat transfer as well as the latent cooling effect due to produce des iccation. Investigations on ten fresh samples each of ripe tomato and cucumber established that there is a good agreement between the comple ted temperatures from the proposed model and the experimentally measur ed values.