A mathematical model to study the influence of wireless temperature sensor during assessment of canned food sterilization Original Research Article

Wireless temperature sensors (WTS) are measurement devices widely used by food industry to determine time-temperature history during typical processes, such as thermal sterilization. A mathematical model was developed to study, under certain hypotheses, how the insertion of (WTS) influence the heat transfer into conductive canned food. The considered system is mainly described by a can filled with a conductive food with a WTS fixed at the bottom or suspended in the container, to measure the temperature at the slowest heating point. The equations have been solved by means of the finite element method to predict the temperature in every point of the domain. The domain has been meshed in different ways, by increasing the node density where a better investigation is needed, such as around the WTS. The kinetics of microbial inactivation was coupled to the heat transfer model to analyse the processes in terms of the sterilizing value. Simulation results show that the influence of the temperature sensor is related to the relative dimensions of can and WTS, as well as to the WTS position into the container.