A New Mathematical Model for Food Thermal Process Prediction

A mathematical model was developed to correlate the four heat penetration parameters of 57 Stumbo’s tables (18,513 datasets) incanned food: (the difference between the retort and the coldest point temperatures in the canned food at the end of the heatingprocess), ℎ/ (the ratio of the heating rate index to the sterilizing value), (the temperature change required for the thermaldestruction curve to traverse one log cycle), and , (the cooling lag factor). The quantities , , and , are input variables forpredicting ℎ/, while , and ℎ/ are input variables for predicting the value of , which is necessary to calculate the heatingprocess time , at constant retort temperature, using Ball’s formula. The process time calculated using the value obtained fromthemathematicalmodel closely followed the time calculated fromthe tabulated values (rootmean square of absolute errors RMS= 0.567 min, average absolute error = 0.421 min with a standard deviation SD = 0.380 min). Because the mathematical model canbe used to predict the intermediate values of any combination of inputs, avoiding the storage requirements and the interpolation of57 Stumbo’s tables, it allows a quick and easy automation of thermal process calculations and to perform these calculations using aspreadsheet