Food thermophysical property models

The design engineer must predict the thermophysical properties of foods in order to design food storage and refrigeration equipment and estimate process times for refrigerating, freezing, heating or drying of foods. Since the thermophysical properties of foods are strongly dependent upon chemical composition and temperature, composition based models provide a means of estimating these properties. Numerous models of this type have been proposed and the designer of food processing equipment is thus faced with the challenge of selecting appropriate models from the plethora of those available. This paper describes selected food thermophysical property models and evaluates their performance by comparing their results to experimental thermophysical property data. The results given in this paper will be of value to the design engineer in the selection of appropriate food thermophysical property models.