Computational Fluid Dynamics Modeling for High Pressure Processing

Abstract

High pressures processing (HPP) has shown its importance in food preservation, due to its microbial inactivation ability at lower temperature, i.e. non-thermal sterilization, and high pressure in the range of 100–900 MPa. HPP keeps a product’s freshness intact, along with nutrients such as vitamins. HPP is used for pressure shift freezing, high pressure thawing, and high pressure thermal (HPT) processing. HPP technology has shown rapid development in the preservation and processing of liquid and high moisture foods, such as fruit juices, ready-to eat meals, meat products, sea-food products, etc. Combined with high temperature, high pressures thermal (HPT) processing has shown promise in increasing shelf-life of foods at room temperature for months to years. HPT helps to achieve commercial sterile low acid shelf-stable food products. However, the temperature profile of a food during the high pressure thermal process has a significant effect on the final product’s quality and preservation. Therefore, it is very important from the food safety point of view to achieve uniform temperature inside the processing vessel (Koutchma 2012; Ghani and Farid 2007a).