COLLECTION of ACCURATE EXPERIMENTAL DATA FOR TESTING the PERFORMANCE of SIMPLE METHODS FOR FOOD FREEZING TIME PREDICTION

Abstract

Objective testing of the accuracy of food freezing time prediction formulae requires experimental data to be of high quality. It is shown that there are shortcomings in commonly used experimental methods, particularly relating to minimizing heat transfer in all but the required dimensions in experiments with the slab and infinite cylinder shapes, in maintaining uniformity of surface heat transfer coefficients across a sample, and in measurement of surface heat transfer coefficients. Broad guidelines to ensure that the errors introduced by experimental techniques are negligibly small are proposed. Major published experimental data sets are compared to these guidelines and comments made on their likely accuracy.