ABSTRACT
Cooking has been addressed to influence the human species, evolution, firstly due to the impact on the energy balance related to food processing and associated with higher digestibility of many foods. Many researchers are focusing their attention to model a tool for optimizing food processes. It is not only for the energy saving and economic aspects, but also to achieve the final food products' texture, flavor, and nutritional value. Modeling is also a valid instrument for better understanding the different scales of the cooking process. Quantitative models can be used for many activities and applications. A general model for the thermal processing of food matrices based on heat and mass transfer equations and a partial differential equations (PDEs) approach have been presented, implemented on commercial finite-elements software and validated on different test cases. The macro-component approach used for the research seems to be valid for estimation of the transport properties, even with the simplification coming from the homogenization assumption.
