Computational fluid dynamics in drying and cooling operations applied to the food industry

Abstract

The study of mass transfer should be started from the viewpoint of transport phenomena followed by macroscopic separation processes. To develop the transport phenomena area it is necessary to advance in mathematical analysis and computational tools for processes design and optimization. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is a versatile and, accurate choice, which has evolved in recent years to obtain a growing interest in the scientific community of food engineering. This paper shows an overview of the fundamentals of mass transfer and CFD applications in mass transfer operations of food industry, based on the available literature on the Science Direct, EBSCO and Scielo databases between 1999 and 2009. There has been considerable growth in the development and application of CFD in drying and refrigeration areas.