THERMODYNAMIC APPROACH TO EQUILIBRIUM ISOTHERMS IN SALTED STRUCTURED FOOD

摘要

Some foods are preserved by salting in NaCl saturation conditions (fish,nmeat and some vegetables).nIt is known that the polyphasic and multicomponent character of foodsnplays a basic role in defining equilibrium conditions; therefore, it is essentialnfor a correct modeling of food behavior. However, in most cases, only onenhomogeneous phase is considered for process modeling.nIn this paper, the polyphasic and multicomponent character of foods wasnapplied for thermodynamic description of salted foods in order to have a betternanalysis of their water sorption isotherms. A simplified model of the food innterms of four phases (aqueous solution of salt and native soluble solids, solidnmatrix and fat) is proposed.nThe water sharing out between phases was analyzed, and the waterncontent and relationships for each phase were proposed. This model wasnapplied to salted meat isotherms, obtaining a good fitting between experimentalnand predicted data.