Computational fluid dynamics for the prediction of temperature profiles and hygienic design in the food industry

Many factors need to be considered to ensure that food process lines consistently deliver microbiologically safe products. These factors include process and equipment design, and in particular the interaction between the product and the equipment geometry. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has recently been used within the food industry in a number of applications. In this work a commercial finite volume CFD code, FLUENT, has been used to predict those parameters critical to the prediction of velocity and temperature profiles for low viscosity fluids in typical, complex equipment geometries and compared these with experimental data. A comparison of the temperature distribution using predictive modelling and experiments is encouraging, and qualitatively satisfactory and reliable for laminar and turbulent flows. Application of this approach will enable the interaction between food products and equipment geometries to be predicted, and provide an improved method of assessing the implications for the microbiological safety of foods.