ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on the microbicidal action of infrared heating and its mechanism of action by means of computational fluid dynamics and Monte Carlo simulation which are based on the fundamentals of quantum physics of radiation. Infrared rays are used in various industrial fields such as sensing, measuring, analysis, communication and heat treatment. In the food industry in particular, the heating effect of infrared rays has been widely applied to maturing and drying and surface baking. A. Hashimoto et al. also showed that ar-infrared irradiation (IR) was more effective for pasteurization than near IR. Mathematical modeling techniques are one of the most useful tools for the appropriate design and control of a Far Infrared (FIR) heating system. Studies on FIR heating of foods have used either a nonlinear radiation boundary condition based on the Stefan–Boltzman law for pairs of diffuse grey surfaces, or simply specified the value of the incident radiative heat flux.