Osvaldo H. CAMPANELLA
Agricultural and Biological Engineering and Whistler Center for Carbohydrate Research
Purdue University
West Lafayette, USA
ABSTRACT: Food processes encompass a variety of unit operations that involve the transfer of heat, mass and momentum to biological materials. In the last years significant advances have been done on the development of numerical tools that enable the solution of a large number of problems within the area of chemical engineering. However, the modeling of food process often involves unsteady state conditions, rheologically complex materials, and complex geometries. The application of transport phenomena principles to understand and describe the typical operation to produce corn flakes will be presented. Characteristics of the flow during the corn flake operation are unsteady steady process, free moving boundaries and complex and unknown rheology. Methods to circumvent some of these problems will be presented as well as the development of a new rheological technique to characterize the viscoelasticity of intermediate materials prior the flaking operation. Keywords: transport phenomena, cereal processing, rheology
