Numerical simulation and experimental investigation of freezing process applied to fresh wolfberries.

Wolfberries can enhance the immune system, improve eye sight, and circulation, and to possess anticarcinogenic properties. However, the fresh wolfberries are very difficult to preserve. Freezing is a well-known and widely used long-term food preservation process. In this work , the freezing process of the fresh wolfberries is studied with numerical simulation and experimental investigation. The computational fluid dynamics method is used to analyze the temperature evolution in the fresh wolfberries during freezing. And the simulation results were compared to experimental freezing curves using different fresh wolfberries for freezing. A good agreement between measurements and model predictions were obtained. In addition, the effects of freezing process on fresh wolfberry storage quality in terms of quality attributes such as the sensory evaluation, total soluble solids content, titratable acidity content, Vitamin C content, and activity of peroxidase were studied. The results show that freezing has beneficial effect on the preservation of fresh wolfberries.