A Study on the Thermal Diffusivity of Egg Yolk and White Gels

Abstract

In previous papers, we have studied thermal diffusivity of spherical and slab solid foods, and the cooking-rate equations of slice and spherical root vegetables. In order to design various kinds of cooking apparatus, it is also necessary to measure thermal diffusivity of softish foods such as sol and gel. In this paper, we studied thermal diffusivity of sols and gels of egg yolk and white in a slab container. The values of thermal diffusivity were obtained to be 0.069 and 0.083 cmcm²/min for the gels of egg yolk and white, respectively. The reported numerical integral method for the unconstant conditions by using a non-linear least square method are useful to obtain the values of thermal diffusivity of various softish foods.