Multi-Physics Modeling as a Design Tool: Advances and Prospects

During the last 20 y, so-called electro-heating processes (radio frequency (RF), microwave (MW), and ohmic (OH)) have gained wide interest in industrial food processing. Many applications using the above-mentioned technologies have been developed with the aim of reducing processing time, improving process efficiency, and, in many cases, increasing the heating uniformity of the food product being processed, both at domestic and industrial levels. As competition in the global market has grown, the time of conception, prototyping, and validation of new systems based on electro-heating (especially MW) has been reduced due to the continued need for manufacturers to improve their products (as, for example, better performing combined MW ovens for domestic purposes, or particularly efficient MW continuous dryers for industrial purposes). In this scenario, the use of mathematical modeling and virtual prototyping as design tools allows a considerable savings of both time of processing and engineering costs. In fact, modeling experts can make a valuable contributions to the development of new products to enter the market for domestic and industrial supplies by providing very specific and targeted responses to innovation challenges. In this presentation, simple but effective case studies will be addressed spanning solutions for research presented in the literature to niche applications. In addition, it will be discussed if and how multiphysics mathematical modeling can drive innovation in very specific applications, such as mild-drying, devoted to processing of high-added-value food products