2008 Volume 9 Issue 1 Pages 43-50
As a food-heating process, the Joule heating system has been receiving increasing attentions as a sophisticated heating system because of nonscorching, accurate heating, and cleanness. However, there are a few reports concerning the internal temperature distribution of food materials, especially in relation to the Joule heating system. In a previous paper, we developed a visualizing method to observe and record the internal temperature distribution of food materials and compared the visualized results with the data simulated by a numerical analysis. As the results, the visualized results accurately coincided with the data from the numerical analysis. However, in order to apply the Joule heating method to various foods, the experiment and numerical analysis must be discussed in the case of a change in the area of the electrode plates. In this paper, the measurement of the potential distribution and numerical analysis are proposed and the heat generation in the case of a change in the area of the electrode plates is clarified. The effectiveness of the proposed method is shown by comparing the experimental results with the analysis results.