Chapter Seven - Modeling high pressure thermal processing

Abstract

Innovative food processing technologies, such as high pressure processing at low and elevated to high temperatures, have gained increasing interest over the past decade as it can be applied to manufacture safe foods with better sensory and nutritional properties. While high pressure processing at low temperatures High pressure processing has been commercially applied for >10 years, high pressure thermal processing (HPTP) is yet to be commercialized due to the lack of equipment available that operates at industrial scale. HPTP has been hailed as the next disruptive technology in the food industry and will play an important role toward satisfying consumer demand for high quality, safe, and innovative products. Computational Fluid Dynamics has been established as a tool for characterizing, improving, and optimizing traditional food processing technologies; innovative technologies, however, provide additional complexity and challenges because of the interacting multiphysics phenomena. This article will highlight multiphysics modeling case studies, mainly from the authors institution, for the characterization of various processing aspects and optimization of HPTP.