ABSTRACT
Cooling perishable commodities as quickly as possible after harvest has become a widely used method of maximizing postharvest life, preventing spoilage, and maintaining quality. The most common differential scanning calorimeter is Perkin Elmer’s. It is well suited for the determination of the temperature effect on specific heat of food products, because it easily scans a wide range of temperatures. In Vacuum bottle calorimeter technique, the food sample at a known mass and temperature is put into a calorimeter of known specific heat containing water at a known temperature and weight. The unknown specific heat is then calculated from a heat balance between the heat gained or lost by the water and calorimeter and that lost or gained by the sample. Thermal conductivity of a material is a measure of its heat transmittance ability. In food materials, thermal conductivity depends mainly on the structure, composition, and kind of material, as well as temperature.
