Heat transfer in breaded and non-breaded chicken nuggets baked in a pilot-scale radiant wall oven

Abstract

A pilot-scale radiant wall oven (RWO) was used for baking chicken nuggets, some breaded with different coatings, and also non-breaded. Overall and radiant heat transfer coefficients were calculated at the surface of nuggets based on the experimental temperature and heat flux measurements. The baking temperatures ranged between 347 °C and 407 °C with different processing times. The non-breaded nuggets had higher heat flux and the radiant heat transfer coefficients, 46897 ± 429 W/m2 and 151.1 W/m2K, than the breaded nuggets. Among the breaded nuggets, the corn flour breaded nuggets had higher heat transfer coefficient values than those of chickpea breaded because the corn flour has greater absorptivity for infrared radiation than that of chickpea flour. A correlation was found between the temperature and heat flux for non-breaded and corn breaded chicken nuggets.