Evaluation of High-Pressure Thermophysical Parameters of the Diacylglycerol (DAG) Oil Using Ultrasonic Waves

Abstract

Modeling of high-pressure technological processes in the food industry requires knowledge of thermophysical parameters of processed foodstuffs in a broad range of pressures and temperatures. However, the high-pressure thermophysical parameters of foodstuffs are very rarely published in the literature. Therefore, further research is necessary to achieve a deeper insight into the biophysical and thermophysical phenomena under pressure to provide better control of technological processes and optimize the effects of pressure. The essential goal of this work is to evaluate the impact of high pressure and temperature on the thermophysical parameters of liquid foodstuffs on the example of diacylglycerol (DAG) oil (which attracted recently a considerable attention from research and industrial communities due to its remarkable benefits for health), using ultrasonic wave velocity and density measurements. Isotherms of adiabatic and isothermal compressibility, isobaric thermal expansion coefficient, internal pressure, and thermal pressure coefficient versus pressure were evaluated, based on the measurement of the compressional ultrasonic wave velocity and density of DAG oil at high pressures (up to 500 MPa) and at various temperatures. The adiabatic compressibility is affected mostly by the changes of pressure, i.e., it grows about four times when the pressure increases from the atmospheric pressure (0.1 MPa) to 400 MPa at a temperature of 50 °C. By contrast, the internal pressure is a pronounced function of the temperature, i.e., it increases six times when the temperature rises from 20 to 50 °C at a pressure of a 200 MPa. To perform numerical calculations, it was convenient to introduce a Tammann–Tait type equation of state to approximate the measured density isotherms of the investigated DAG oil. The results obtained in this paper can be applied in modeling and optimization of high-pressure technological processes and processing of foodstuffs. Evaluation of high-pressure isotherms of the considered thermophysical parameters of the DAG oil is an original authors’ contribution to the state-of-the-art.