Development of a simple and robust inverse method for determination of thermal diffusivity of solid foods

Thermal properties are essential requirements for mathematical modeling and simulation of various thermal processing operations. Knowledge of accurate values of thermal properties will result in accurate prediction of temperature profiles needed for process selection, design and optimization. The aim of this work was to develop a simple, accurate and robust method for determination of thermal diffusivity of solid foods. An inverse numerical method was developed to estimate thermal diffusivity from transient temperature measurements at any position in a food sample using sequential parameter estimation technique. The developed algorithm was validated using computer generated temperatures in addition to actual experimental temperatures data. The estimated thermal diffusivity from the computer generated data is in excellent agreement with the true value, and the estimated thermal diffusivity from the experimental measurements is in good agreement with literature data. The method presented here was demonstrated to be simple accurate and robust.