Determination of Thermal Diffusivity in Industrial Measurements and their use in Modelling and Simulation of the Thermal Processes

Abstract

A lot of heat treatments are carried out in the food processing plants from day to day. It would be very useful, if we can use them in the determination of surface heat transfer coefficient and thermal diffusivity. which are the most important parameters in mathematical modelling and simulation of the non-steady heat conduction and thermal process calculations. In the literature, we can find only few figures of them, especially values determined in industrial circumstances.Therefore the authors• give a survey of the available determination methods• analyse the initial and boundary conditions existing in industrial thermal process• outline the problems and solution possibility of the determination of the thermal diffusivity and surface heat transfer coefficient,• analyse the possible errors derived from measurements and calculations• determine the most important parameters and factors with the lowest error as far as possible on the base of the experimental design and error propagation• give several examples on the effect of the results on the thermal process calculation.