Cooling curves for the preliminary design of beef chillers

A multilayer two-dimensional model of beef carcass chilling using CFD-generated heat transfer coefficients was used to calculate the parameters of leg and shoulder cooling curves, assuming an exponential cooling model. A central composite experiment was designed to systematically vary air velocity, side weight and fat thickness. Comparison with experimental data suggests that the predicted characteristic time for the leg, and hence the cooling time to a given temperature, should be multiplied by a correction factor 1.07. The effects of airflow direction and of radiation heat transfer have been quantified. A correlation was proposed to estimate leg centre temperature from shoulder temperature. The shortcut formulae and methods presented here will be useful in the design and troubleshooting of industrial beef chillers. They could also be used in Monte Carlo simulations where a large number of samples are considered, to take into account random variations in product characteristics and operating conditions.