A new computational technique for the estimation of sterilization time in canned food

Sterilization of liquid food in cans is complicated by the influence of natural convection currents induced by the hot walls of the can. In order to predict the temperature variation of the slowest heating zone (SHZ) with time, it is necessary to use computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis, which can be done with the help of a number of available commercial software. However, the required computational time is usually of the order of hours. In this paper, simple method of calculation is developed to predict the SHZ without the requirement of sophisticated computations. A generalized correlation was developed to predict the change of the SHZ with time for different fluids and can sizes.