Relationship between heat transfer parameters and the characteristic damage variables for the freezing of beef

One of the most suitable parameters for relating the freezing rate to the volume of drip produced during the thawing of meat is the characteristic time, defined as the time necessary to reduce the temperature of the sample from -1·1°C (initial freezing point in beef) to -7°C (80% of the water frozen). However, as the freezing of beef in factories takes place with important temperature gradients, distributions of these characteristic times must be expected along the pieces of frozen meat. In order to relate these characteristic time distributions to heat transfer parameters under industrial freezing conditions, a mathematical model which simulates the freezing of beef is developed in this paper. The model establishes the heat transfer equations with simultaneous change of phase, taking into account the dependence of the thermal properties with the ice content and considering the anisotropy of the thermal conductivity according to the direction of the fibres. Boundary conditions include the possibility of thermal resistances in the refrigerated interphase. The model developed was compared with laboratory experiments performed under factory freezing conditions and showed a satisfactory agreement between theory and experiment.