Virtualization strategies for modeling the energy transfer in a food undergoing RF heating

Heating uniformity in radiofrequency (RF) heating of agricultural and food commodities is a challenge to overcome for the development and dissemination of commercial RF heating systems at industrial scale. Different experimental studies have been carried out to test the effectiveness of RF heating in different food processing techniques. Modeling and simulation remains as one of the best tool used to virtualize the challenges of heating non-uniformity and effective tool to analyze and characterize the heating patterns during RF heating. Different strategies used to build-up virtualization of RF heating were briefly discussed in this paper. Dielectric and thermos-physical properties of the product subjected RF heating the key-factors to link the fundamental modeling approach with the data related to the investigated food material. The energy transfer across the food sample due to the RF heating and external convection effects have been discussed. Alternatively, using representative food samples like tylose with known thermo-physical and dielectric properties are also another strategy to be used to describe RF heating system. © 2015 DIME UNIVERSITÀ DI GENOVA