Numerical and experimental analysis on poultry freezing time.

Cooling and freezing food is one of the most widely discussed topics in the refrigeration literature. Some semi-empirical models have been proposed to estimate the total freezing time but the achievable results can be significantly different depending on the model used. This paper focuses on the freezing time of poultry products. Thanks to a calibrated numerical approach, this paper intends to assess some classic semi-analytical models commonly used to evaluate the food freezing time, whose accuracy relies on some empirical parameters obtained by curve-fitting experimental data. In this work, some original experimental data on packed poultry samples are collected. Afterwards, a numerical 3D model is calibrated against the experimental results. Then the numerical procedure is adapted and used to carry out a comparison between some existing models for infinite slab geometry and to investigate the effect of the sample dimension.