THERMAL INVESTIGATION OF BAKING NEAPOLITAN PIZZAS IN INNOVATIVE ELECTRIC OVEN

摘要

True Neapolitan pizza should be baked in traditional wood-fired ovens, according to Specification of Production no 56/2010. However, airborne and hazard pollutants due to wood combustion may lead to severe air quality impacts, so that design and development of electric oven, alternative to wood-fired ones, is a suitable target for air pollution control strategies. In this paper a three-dimensional Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) model has used to evaluate thermal performances of an electric oven for Neapolitan pizzas. The CFD model comprises the continuity, momentum and energy equations, whereas the standard k-ε approach has been used for turbulence closure and surface-to-surface model has been applied for radiation. Coupled conduction-convection and radiation is taken into account to assess the walls that bound the cooking chamber. Electric heaters located into the bed and dome walls of the cooking chamber provide the heat generation, allowing the baking of pizzas. A condition of full load oven has considered, consisting of nine pizzas placed on the bed of the cooking chamber and different thermo-physical model properties have been investigated, with a baking time of 90 s. Results have highlighted that the radiative heat transfer is the predominant mechanisms for pizza baking. Moreover, the role of pizza emissivity on temperature time evolution has been investigated, considering three different emissivity values. In addition, results have been compared with a model with constant thermo-physical properties for pizza, scrutinizing the role of such parameters on thermal baking performance.