Analysis and simulation of continuous food frying processes

Frying is a very energy intensive process as it invariably involves the evaporation of significant quantities of water from the food product. The process is also complex to control due to the variability of raw materials, the large number of parameters involved and the interactions between these parameters. Good control of the process is, however, important as it determines not only the final product quality attributes but also has a significant influence on energy consumption. This paper presents a quasi steady state model for the simulation of a continuous frying system. The model which was implemented in the MATLAB/Simulink environment has been shown to reproduce data from an industrial crisp production line with a reasonable degree of accuracy. The model can be used to investigate the impact of different design and control strategies on energy consumption.