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Model ID: 3924

A Transient Analysis of Freeze-drying

Freeze-drying, or lyophilization, is a process for drying heat-sensitive substances such as foods, blood plasma, and antibiotics. The wet substance is frozen and then through sublimation ice or some other frozen solvent is removed in the presence of a high vacuum.

This example models the process ice sublimation in a vial under vacuum-chamber conditions, a test case for many freeze-drying setups.

The model uses the arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) method to compute the coupled heat and mass balances on a moving mesh attached to the advancing vapor-ice interface.

A Transient Analysis of Freeze-drying Slice plot of the temperature, the arrows indicate the direction of the heat flux.


Engineering Fields

  • Heating, Cooling & Phase Transfer in the Process Industry
  • Heating in Bioengineering & Medical Technology
  • Mass Transfer
  • Energy Transfer

Application Areas

  • Teaching
  • Heat Transfer
  • Chemical Engineering
  • Biomedical Engineering

Products Used

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