Modeling the thawing of frozen foods using air impingement technology

With the continual growth in the use of frozen foods both in retail and in food service, there is a need to develop improved thawing methods. Current methods are often undesirably slow (still air) or are very expensive and cause uneven thawing (microwave). Air impingement technology is one possible method to improve the thawing of frozen foods. The objectives of this research were to develop a two-dimensional model for air impingement thawing frozen foods and to verify the model experimentally. Frozen products were thawed using a laboratory impingement system with a single impingement jet. A simulated meat product (Tylose gel) was used as the test material. Thawing of a Tylose disk (12.7 cm diameter, 1.98 cm thickness) with air at 6 °C without impingement required more than 12 h, while thawing under a single impingement jet took less than 3 h, over four times faster. Results from the finite difference model gave good agreement with experimental data. Moisture loss during thawing was typically over-predicted because moisture gain due to condensation was not modeled.