Cornell University Biological and Environmental Engineering

• Research Areas
• Biomedical Applications
• Food as Porous Media
• Combination Microwave Heating
• Thermal and Hygrostresses
• Computer-Aided Food Process Engineering

Fundamental Studies of Moisture Transport - Food as a Porous Media

Engineering description of many food processes such as drying, baking and frying can be systematically and accurately developed by treating the food as a porous media with multiphase transport of energy, water, vapor and other components inside this porous media. Such descriptions provide more insight into the moisture transport process by identifying the various transport mechanisms separately as opposed to lumping them under an empirical parameter of effective diffusivity. However, such models require a level of understanding and values of different parameters of the food in terms of structure and transport that is not available today. Our goal is to develop this framework of porous media treatment of foods to be able to understand the processes at much greater detail and therefore be able to optimize them.

For example, we have shown how pressure driven (Darcy) flow of moisture is important in making a microwave heated food soggy. We are also adding shrinkage or swelling to the porous media, again using a fundamental approach by considering the equations of solid mechanics.

 

Selected Publications on Moisture Transport

• Porous Media Approaches to Studying Simultaneous Heat and Mass Transfer in Food Processes. I: Problem Formulations. Journal of Food Engineering, In Press, 2006 (get a copy)
• Porous Media Approaches to Studying Simultaneous Heat and Mass Transfer in Food Processes. II: Property Data and Representative Results, Journal of Food Engineering, In Press, 2006 (get a copy)