Heat and Mass Transport During Microwave Heating of Mashed Potato in Domestic Ovens - Model Development, Validation, and Sensitivity Analysis

摘要

Computer simulation of the microwave heating process is becoming a powerful tool to help food scientists in developing food products, packages and cooking instructions that provide better cooking performance in domestic microwave ovens in terms of heating uniformity. Many models only simulated a short microwave heating time, such as 30 s, where the moisture movement and evaporation were not significant. For longer microwave heating duration, water evaporation is significant not only on the food surface but also inside the food product due to volumetric heating. A 3-D multiphase porous media microwave heating model using domestic microwave ovens has not been reported. Multiphase porous media models describing complex physical process, such as microwave heating in this study, require many input parameters. The objective of this work was to develop and validate a microwave heat-mass transfer model, and evaluate the effect of selected parameters on the predicted temperature profiles and total moisture loss.