Thermal modelling of catering meals under blastcooling
2010
Rabi, J. | Guilpart, J. | Derens, Evelyne | Duquenoy, Albert
Among catering operations, cooling often brings issues about Clostridium perfringens outbreaks in foodstuff, whose prevention depends on specific temperature-time combinations. Beef-in-sauce catering meals under blast-cooling at a hospital central kitchen have been continuously studied. Several temperature-time profiles have been recorded in situ for foodstuff and cooling air, interfering as little as possible on their usual modus operandi. In view of a preliminary coupling to a predictive microbiology model, a zero-order approach (with respect to spatial coordinates) has been proposed to predict foodstuff temperatures in response to temperature variations of the cooling air. Heat transfers were modelled evoking a convective heat transfer coefficient and the resulting governing differential equation was numerically solved via a fourth-order Runge-Kutta method. Recorded and numerical foodstuff profiles correlated well with an average correlation coefficient of 0.9990, although the resulting Biot number may not in principle recommend zero-order modelling.
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