Ashim K. Datta, Research

• Current Projects
• Equine Airway Model
• Drug Delivery
• Combination Microwave Heating
• Moisture Transport in Baking & Frying
• Uncertainty in Thermal Processing
• Computer-Aided Engineering

Multiphase transport with phase change in food as hygroscopic porous media

Multiphase heat and mass transfer in hygroscopic porous media is the fundamental physics behind a variety of food processes such as deep fat frying, meat cooking, baking and freeze drying. Traditionally, lumped parameter analysis has been the dominant approach in studying these processes due to limitations in understanding of the underlying physics, unavailability of engineering properties of food materials and lack of computational resources. Our study aims to identify various transport mechanisms separately and develop rigorous, more fundamental models for better understanding and optimization of food processing techniques. Deep fat frying and microwave heating of potatoes as well as bread baking with large deformation have already been modeled under this framework. Currently, different meat cooking processes are being studied. The attempt is to translate largely empirical descriptions of moisture and fat transport, phase change and their holding capacities by meat as porous matrix into accurate models based on fundamental physics.

Temperature, transportable water and fat concentration profiles after 75 sec of double-sided contact heating of initially frozen hamburger patty (unpublished work) (Initial Temperature: -18 °C; Initial Water Conc: 324 kg/m³ Initial Fat Conc: 147 kg/m³)