Predicting the cooling time for irregular shaped food products

A new method for calculating the cooling time for fresh fruits and vegetables and processed foods is presented. The method uses the truncated analytical solution of the governing partial differential equation to define a cooling curve with two parameters. One parameter is the lowest eigenvalue for the product. The second parameter is a constant multiplier similar to the one that occurs in the analytical solution. The lowest eigenvalue is evaluated using a finite element analysis. The multiplying constant is evaluated using a finite element solution in time. Cooling curves for a Rome apple and a Bartlett pear are presented and discussed.