Catering Meals Under Blast-Cooling: Comparison between Zero and First-Order Modeling with Respect to Spatial Dependence of Temperature

Abstract

Beef-in-sauce catering meals under blast-cooling have been investigated as part of a research project on quantitative HACCP (hazard analysis and critical control points) for food safety. Bearing in mind the coupling to a predictive microbiology model, this work proposed and tested two models for meal core temperature in response to temperature variations of the cooling air. Both models rely on a convective heat transfer coefficient while differing with respect to the spatial dependence of meal temperature. In the zero-order model, the aforesaid coefficient belongs to the governing ordinary differential equation; in the first-order model, such parameter is part of boundary conditions imposed to the governing partial differential equation. Each model equation was numerically solved and time-temperature profiles simulated for meal core are compared to counterparts recorded in situ. In view of a compromise between model simplicity and realistic description, the zero-order model is a reasonable alternative, besides being easily implemented
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