Abstract
Food models were prepared from wheat starch instead of the usually used wheat flour to study their heat transfer properties. The thermal diffusivity (α) and reciprocal of the retardation time constant (1/τx) for these wheat starch models tended to increase with increasing water content of the model. It appeared that the heat transfer properties of the food models were strongly influenced by the amount of water in them. A similar relationship between the thermal diffusivity (α) and reciprocal of the retardation time constant (1/τx) in the exponential equation was confirmed for the wheat starch and wheat flour models. It was also confirmed that the indices related to this exponential equation exhibited a certain relationship according to the distance x from the heating surface of the food model.
