Sonic temperature sensor for food processing. Final report

The lack of adequate temperature measurement is the major barrier to the development of more efficient and better quality food processing methods. The objective of the sonic temperature sensor for food processing project is to develop a prototype sensor system to noninvasively measure the interior temperature of particulate foods during processing. The development of the prototype sensor is a collaborative project with the National Food Processors Association. The project is based on the property of materials that involves a change in the temperature of a material having a corresponding change in the speed of sound. The approach for the sonic sensor system is to determine the speed of sound through particulate foods using a tomographic reconstruction process. This work has shown that the speed of sound accurately can be determined using tomographic reconstruction methods to an accuracy of {+-} 0.4%, which corresponds to a temperature uncertainty of {+-}2{degrees}C