Identificação de propriedades térmicas em processos de esterilização via métodos numéricos com precisão de alta ordem.

Abstract

The sterilization process of canned foods in retorts is a method widely used in food industry to preserve food by eliminating microbiological and enzymatic activities, thus contributing to well being of world population. The sterilization process requires the transient distribution of temperatures in food in a very precise way, since it is from this that the optimal parameters of the sterilization process are determined, such as heating and cooling time. This work proposes the estimation of thermal diffusivity as a function of temperature, being more reliable to diffusion heat transfer phenomenon than the use of an invariant mean value. As a tool in process of identifying this thermophysical property, this work uses a finite volume method with a high order of precision to solve a differential equation that governs the heat transfer phenomenon, contributing to the minimization of numerical source errors in the estimation property.