Determination of Cold Spot Location During ThermalSterilization of Canned Foods for Cans with DifferentHeadspace Using an IHCP Approach

摘要

An inverse heat conduction problem (IHCP) approached was used to model heattransfer for conduction-canned food with headspace. A one dimensional heat conduction modelwas solved numerically for the heat flux at the surface using internal temperature historymeasurements at 1 cm below the surface of the model food (8 % Bentonite suspension). TheIHCP solution was performed using sequential function specification method with r =4. Theestimated heat flux was then used to solve the direct problem for the temperature profile in theaxial direction including at the sensor position. The results showed that the estimated heat flux isvery accurate due to the excellent agreement between the measured and calculated temperatureat the sensor position in addition to the low value of the mean squares of the error. The resultsreveal that the cold spot is located at 59 % of the model food height from the bottom of the can forthe three levels of the headspace investigated (10%, 14% and 20%). The implication of this resultis that the cold spot could be above or below the geometric center depending on the size of theheadspace.