MEASUREMENT OF THE HEAT-TRANSFER COEFFICIENT IN A THAWING TUNNEL

In a convective (air) thawing tunnel designed in the department of Foo d Engineering at Lund, and previously applied for the thawing of meat, we have measured the heat transfer coefficient using an ice model wit h a geometry which could be approximated to an infinite slab. The heat transfer coefficient was deduced from the agreement between experimen tal and simulated (using a commercial numerical program) data. The res ults could be summarized by the following equation: Nu = 1.27 Re-0.553 . Thus, the dependency of the heat transfer coefficient on the Reynold s number agrees well with correlations found in the literature for sim ilar kinds (freezing, thawing) of application. In particular the found Nusselt relationship was in a very good agreement with the Heldman co rrelation for freezing of foodstuffs in the turbulent regime.