Abstract
Most of the published methods for estimating the freezing time require thermal properties of the product and any relevant heat transfer coefficients between the product and the cooling medium. However, the difficulty of obtaining thermal data for use in industrial freezing system of food has been pointed out. We have developed a new procedure for estimating the time to freeze a food of a slab by using the inverse method, which does not require the knowledge of thermal properties of the food being frozen. The method of applying inverse method to estimation of freezing time depends on the shape of the body to be frozen. In this paper, we explored the method of applying inverse method to the food body of cylindrical shape, using selected explicit expressions to describe the temperature profile. The temperature profile was found to be successfully approximated by a logarithmic function, with which an approximate equation to describe the freezing time was derived. An inversion procedure of estimating freezing time associated with the approximate equation, was validated via a numerical experiment.
