Studies on Thermal Sterilization of Liquid Foods Using CFD

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is a tool used to simulate fluid flow and heat transfer problems, using numerical solutions to the equations describing such transport phenomena, for example the Navier Stokes equations which describes the flow of fluids inside a defined flow geometry. CFD offers a powerful design and investigative tool to process engineers. CFD has wide applications in the areas of aerospace and nuclear industries backed by the availability of powerful supercomputers. CFD has expanded into other industries such as chemical and petrochemical. It is only in recent years that it has been applied to the food industry, with a limited variety of food related problems being investigated. Its application in Food Technology and Food Processing Engineering would be beneficial for the better understanding of the physical mechanisms that govern the thermal, physical and rheological properties of food materials. The development of CFD packages came from the need to create computer programs of general nature capable of solving these equations for a wide range of geometry and boundary conditions.