抄録
Ice crystal structure was analyzed for frozen agar gel under unidirectional freezing in various operating conditions to elucidate the mechanism of the process of ice crystal growth. A linear relationship was obtained between the mean ice crystal size and the inverse of the moving speed of the freezing front. The slope of the correlation was in the same order as the diffusion coefficient of water, suggesting the important role of the molecular diffusion in this growth process. No meaningful effect of the agar concentration was observed on the ice structure showing that the agar matrix structure does not affect the ice structure in an agar concentration ranging from 1.5 to 5%.
