Simultaneous heat and mass transfer analysis during air blast precooling of fish packages

Heat and mass transfer analyses are made on exposed food during air blast cooling by using the concept of temperature dependent surface film conductance. An IHCP technique was developed and used to estimate the total surface film conductance of rectangular freshwater fish samples through transient temperature time measurements in one single interior point beneath the surface. Its effective value was found to decrease with diminishing temperature. The variation was regressed to obtain a nonlinear correlation. When this was used to solve the one-dimensional heat conduction equation with heat and mass transfer surface boundary condition equation, a good overall agreement was observed between the computed and the measured temperature variations in comparison with the existing method (Nu-Re-Pr correlation), used earlier. The proposed method simplifies the solution of simultaneous heat and mass transfer problems.