CFD Analysis of Thermal Processing of Intact Eggs

Information on thermal pasteurization of intact eggs is very limited. In this study, the most important thermal properties of eggs, including density, thermal conductivity, surface heat transfer coefficient and flow behavior index, were modeled and measured. In the next part, a three-dimensional numerical model considering temperature dependency of thermophysical properties and computational fluid dynamics codes of heat transfer equations was developed to study the effect of air cell size and eggshell thickness and to predict the local temperature and F-value during pasteurization. Results showed that while the air cell acted as a heat insulator, increasing the air cell volume decreased the heat transfer rate, which resulted in longer pasteurization time. Thus, the effect of eggshell thickness was not significant compared to the air cell volume. The effects of whole egg rotation on pasteurization were investigated in the last part. The findings elucidate that the rotational process improves the efficiency of the heating process by ensuring more uniform heating as compared to static heating.