What is Food Chilling

Refrigeration is a widely used technique in the food industry to avoid microbiological spoilage of products. Several variables can affect the performance of chilling process, including the shape and the dimensions of the product, the thermophysical properties of the food and the cooling fluid. The evaporative cooling increases the rate at which the temperature of the products is reduced. However, it makes the refrigeration process more complex, since it involves the simultaneous mass and heat transfer. In this context, numerical simulation is a useful tool to analyze the processes because it allows investigating different operational conditions in a virtual environment, in a quick and inexpensive way. The goal of this chapter was to study the influence of process variables on thermal and microbiological behavior of minimally processed foods submitted to refrigeration process with and without evaporative cooling effect, by means of two case studies.