Predicting the Transformation of a Liquid Food Product within a Tubular Heat Exchanger

A. Plana-Fattori [1], E. Auger [1], C. Doursat [1], D. Flick [1]
[1] AgroParisTech, Paris, France
Published in 2015

Continuous heat treatment is employed in food industry as a key step in the production of selected products, like dairy desserts. The evolution of an aqueous suspension of starch granules along an existing heat exchanger is here studied by 3D modeling of fluid flow, heat transfer and transformation. 3D modeling puts in evidence the role played by the curved tubes (bends) situated between successive heating sections. 3D results are compared with those obtained after representing the heat exchanger by a sequence of axi-symmetrical two-dimensional computational domains (2D modeling). While being more realistic, 3D predictions of the transformation state are in between those reached from 2D modeling after assuming successively no mixing and full mixing in the bends.