Journal of Food Engineering 78 (2007) 230237

www.elsevier.com/locate/jfoodeng

Modelling local heat and mass transfer in food

slabs due to air jet impingement
M.V. De Bonis, G. Ruocco

CFDfood, DITEC, Universita degli studi della Basilicata, Campus Macchia Romana, 85100 Potenza, Italy
Received 24 March 2005; accepted 26 September 2005
Available online 17 November 2005

Abstract
Adequate design and verication of drying by a forced convection enhanced technique (gaseous jet impingement) can be carried out
by numerical analysis, but customary transport calculations need to be integrated to account for complex (simultaneous) energy and
mass transfer. In this paper the available procedures are reviewed and applied to food substrates: temperature, mass concentration
and velocity elds are computed even for non-linear couplings (i.e. when local species concentration depends on temperature) using a
specic solution strategy. Validity and limitations of the adopted notation and related integration into a proprietary software are discussed. A comparison is also brought forth with the available literature data.
 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Jet impingement heat and mass transfer; Transient CFD; Food dehydration; Local water activity; Evaporation kinetics

1. Introduction
Among the available forced convection processes, the
gaseous jet impingement (JI) is frequently used for its
excellent heat and mass transfer characteristics, where
localized, controlled and rapid surface transfer is desirable. Studies on JI have been performed extensively over
the past ve decades, nevertheless the coupling and interdependence between simultaneous mass/heat transfer
and uid dynamics still needs to be fully analyzed, with
special reference to local distribution of transfer rates on
substrates of dierent shape (see for example Olsson,
Ahrne, & Tragardh, 2004; Sarghini & Ruocco, 2004).
Additional diculties arise when in the subject impinged
solid a multi-phase transport is allowed. JI can be successfully employed in drying or dehydration of foods by forced
air convection, a most energy-intensive process, which is

Corresponding author.
E-mail address: ruocco@unibas.it (G. Ruocco).

0260-8774/$ - see front matter  2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2005.09.032

commonly used in food engineering to extend food shelflife. Here, the majority of the unbound water normally
present in a food is removed by applying heat under controlled conditions. The reduction in relative humidity
(water activity) inhibits microbial growth and enzyme
kinetics, also resulting in transport and storage costs reduction. In turn, drying may cause deterioration of both eating
quality and nutritional value of the food. In food engineering, the design and operation of drying equipment aim to
minimize these changes by selection of appropriate
conditions.
Dehydration involves a rather complex combination of
application of heat and removal of moisture from a food
medium (Barbosa-Ca`novas & Vega-Mercado, 1996; Fellows, 2000). In addition to air temperature and relative
humidity, the rate of moisture removal is controlled by
the air velocity. When hot air is locally blown over a moist
food, water vapor diuses through the boundary layer and
is carried away (Fig. 1). A water vapor pressure gradient is
therefore established from the moist interior to the external
food surfaces. The boundary layer acts as a barrier to both
heat transfer and water vapor removal during drying.

M.V. De Bonis, G. Ruocco / Journal of Food Engineering 78 (2007) 230237

231

Nomenclature
aw
c
cp
d
D
Ea
k
K
K0
l
p
r
R
S
Sct
t
T
u
v
x

water activity (dimensionless)

concentration (g solid/g water)
specic heat at constant pressure (kJ/kg K)
jet diameter (m)
mass diusivity (m2/s)
activation energy (kJ/mol)
turbulent kinetic energy (J/kg)
rate of production of water vapor mass per unit
volume (1/s)
reference rate constant (1/s)
length (m)
pressure (Pa)
radial coordinate (m)
universal gas constant (kJ/mol K)
sucrose equivalent conversion factor (dimensionless)
turbulent Schmidt number (dimensionless)
time (s)
temperature (K)
x-component velocity (m/s)
r-component velocity (m/s)
axial coordinate (m)

Fig. 1. A drying air jet onto a food slab: ow of moisture during process.

Localized forced convection patterns, such as in JI,

contribute to boundary layer destruction, hence in increase
of moisture removal, while equipment costs are kept to a
minimum. Nonetheless, local conditions have to be carefully monitored to ensure product uniformity.
Porous and multi-phase media drying has been long
speculated, and a large number of studies are available, following the seminal works be De Vries (1958) and Whitaker
(1977), that carry complete descriptions of physics, as in
Stanish, Schajer, and Kayihan (1986), Ben Nasrallah and
Perre (1988) and Chen and Pei (1989). Boukadida and
Ben Nasrallah (1995) rst described a two-dimensional

Greek
/
k
m
q
x

mass fraction (dimensionless)

thermal conductivity (W/m K)
kinematic viscosity (m2/s)
density (kg/m3)
specic dissipation rate (1/s)

Superscripts
f
uid side, across the interface
s
solid side, across the interface
Subscripts
0
initial
a
air
i, m
i-species in the mixture
j
jet
s
solid
sr
solid, along r
sx
solid, along x
t
turbulent
v
water vapor
w
liquid water
1r
undisturbed, along r

progress of bulk convective drying of clay, but no contributions have been found in the available literature, with reference to localized convective drying in extended (i.e. at
least 2D) porous media.
A rst contribution of JI drying of a moist, porous solid
was presented by Francis and Wepfer (1996) with a thorough transient physical analysis, yet limited as one-dimensional. Furthermore, this model does not allow for a truly
coupled transfer mechanism, as the surface transfer rates
are externally implied. This limitations are also found in
more recent works by Moreira (2001) and Braud et al.
(2001), who rst applied JI to food drying.
Within this framework, the numerical analysis by a
computational uid dynamics (CFD) approach can gain
importance as it leads to complete multi-dimensional and
transient process description, yet ancillary calculation procedures are still needed to account for fully coupled energy
and mass transfer. The present work has been performed
with the specic aim to merge an in-house computation
routine into a proprietary software (FLUENT 6.1 Users
Guide, 2003) in order to incorporate the multi-dimensional, transient calculation of an evaporation process
due a gaseous impinging, heating jet.

2. Problem formulation
A drying process of a thin food substrate is devised by
using JI: hot, fully turbulent air is discharged through a

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M.V. De Bonis, G. Ruocco / Journal of Food Engineering 78 (2007) 230237

Fig. 2. Characteristic regions in submerged, conned JI.

Fig. 3. Geometry and nomenclature.

nozzle with a given velocity distribution (upon recognition

of the nozzle internal geometry). Upon impact of the free
jet on the substrate, the characteristic stagnation and wall
jet regions are rst formed, then a secondary pattern can
be identied in the lateral regions (Fig. 2). If the impinged
food is water saturated, liquid can be converted into vapor
depending on the heat perturbation front within the substrate, which can then be modelled as a multi-phase medium (a mixture of bulk solid, liquid water and water
vapor). Liquid water normally moves from the interior of
the substrate to the surface (1) by capillary forces, and
(2) by diusion caused by dierences in the concentration
of solutes at the surface and in the interior, while water
vapor moves (3) by diusion in air spaces within the substrate caused by vapor pressure gradients. In this work,
for the sake of simplicity, Fickian diusion is assumed only
for both liquid and water vapor, nevertheless a highly nonuniform drying still results within the substrate, and a given
process time can lead to local overheating and/or incomplete liquid conversion.
2.1. Driving assumptions
In Fig. 3 the subject geometry in cylindrical coordinates
is reported (only half section of the domain is considered
due to the geometry and transfer symmetries). The domain
under scrutiny consists in two interfaced uid-and-substrate multi-species sub-domains, sharing the biomaterials
exposed surface. The uid is a binary system comprising of
1. water vapor (v)
2. air (a)
while the substrate is a ternary system comprising of
1. water vapor (v)
2. liquid water (w)
3. solid matter proper (s).

The following additional assumptions are adopted:

1. The ow is axisymmetric, with constant properties and
incompressible (negligible pressure work and kinetic
energy).
2. The viscous heat dissipation is neglected.
3. Due to the adopted ow regime, no body force is
accounted for.
4. No-slip is enforced at every solid surface.
5. Due to the nature of the interacting species, no diusion
uxes are accounted for in the energy equation.
6. The dilute-mixture assumption is appropriate in each
sub-domain (the velocity components, temperature and
pressure of each species are related to bulk mass in each
governing equation).
7. As the turbulence-chemistry interaction is neglected, the
production of water vapor in the substrate is determined
by an Arrhenius expressions (laminar-nite rate model).

2.2. Governing equations

With reference to the previous statements, the standard
governing RANS and energy equations are enforced, to yield
for velocity components, temperature, pressure mass fractions in both subdomains (Bird, Stewart, & Lightfoot, 2002)
Continuity, for each uid species


o/
o/
o/ v
u
v

ot
ox
or r




mt
1 o
o/ o2 /
r

Di;m
KT
1
r or
or ox2
Sct
where
Di,m (from the Ficks law) is the diusivity of the water
vaporair system in the uid, and the water vapor
liquid water system in the substrate sub-domain;

M.V. De Bonis, G. Ruocco / Journal of Food Engineering 78 (2007) 230237

in the substrate, K is the rate of production of water vapor

mass per unit volume (K = 0 in the uid sub-domain);
in the uidPsub-domain, the overall mass fraction conservation
/ 1 apply, whereas in the solid sub
domain this
condition
is not required during the drying
P
process ( / < 1: voids formation).
Momentum in the axial direction, in the uid sub
domain


ou
ou
ou
op o
ou
u v 
2m mt
ot
ox
or
ox ox
ox



1 o
ou ov
m mt r

2
r or
or ox
Momentum in the radial direction, in the uid subdomain



ov
ov
ov
op o
ou ov
u v 
m mt

ot
ox
or
or ox
or ox


1 o
ov
v
2m mt r

3
 m mt 2
r or
or
r

Fluid, at undisturbed distance (outlet) (r = l1r, 0 < x <

lsx + lj)
o/a;v
ov
oT
0;
0
8
0; u 0;
or
or
or
Upper connement plate (d/2 < r 6 l1r, x = lsx + lj)
o/v;a
0; u 0; v 0; T T 0
9
ox
Lower connement plate (0 < r 6 l1r, x = 0)
o/a;v
o/w;v
0 or
0; where applicable;
ox
ox
u 0; v 0; T T 0

o X
cp /T
ot 

o X
o X
cp /T v
cp /T
q u
ox
or
 2 X


o
1 o
o X
r
cp /T
k kt 2
cp /T
r or or
ox

10

Finally, denoting with the superscripts f and s respectively the uid and the substrate side across the interface,
along the horizontal interface (for x = lsx and 0 6 r 6 lsr)
/fv /sv ;

o/a;w;s
0;
ox

u 0;

v 0;

Tf Ts

11

and along the vertical interface (for r = lsr and 0 6 x 6 lsx)

/fv /sv ;

Energy

233

o/a;w;s
0;
or

u 0;

v 0;

Tf Ts

12

2.4. Turbulence treatment

In the substrate, the usual constraints of u = v = 0 apply in

Eqs. (1)(4), whereas mt and kt are zero (laminar mass and
thermal diusions only).

In Eq. (1) Sct is constant and held to 0.7, while the closure relationships for mt and kt in Eqs. (2)(4), respectively,
can be assumed from the chosen turbulence model. For the
present study, the k  x shear stress transport has been
adopted, having determined elsewhere (Angioletti, Nino,
& Ruocco, 2005) its relative merit for the given ow conguration. Being its treatment beyond the scope of the present work, the Reader is referred to FLUENT 6.1 Users
Guide (2003) for its complete formulation.

2.3. Initial and boundary conditions

2.5. Rate of production of vapor

The food is initially in thermal equilibrium (T = T0)

with the quiescent ambient (u0 = v0 = 0), and saturated
with liquid water (/w = /w0, /v0 = 0); the mass fraction
of solid is constant throughout the treatment (/s = /s0 =
const; /w0 + /s0 = 1). Water vapor is allowed, during
treatment, to ow through the interface, while no liquid
water is allowed in the uid subdomain.
With reference to Fig. 3, the mass, momentum and thermal boundary conditions are as follows:
Jet inlet (0 6 r 6 d/2, x = lsx + lj)

In this paper a model of evaporation of unbound water

has been adopted, based on a rst-order irreversible kinetics (Roberts & Tong, 2003). Liquid water to water vapor
conversion can be generally taken as an Arrhenius rstorder reaction, with a rate dependent on temperature

/v 0;

2.6. Numerical method and additional considerations

/a 1;

u uj ;

v 0;

T Tj

Substrate symmetry axis (r = 0, 0 6 x 6 lsx)

o/v;w
0;
or

oT
0
or

Fluid symmetry axis (r = 0, lsx < x 6 lj)

o/v;a
0;
or

ou
0;
or

v 0;

oT
0
or

KT K 0 eEa =RT

13

where the reference rate constant K0 is 4.96 106 1/s and

the activation energy Ea is 48.7 kJ/mol.

The eect of the dierent values of domain radial length

has rst been monitored, to enforce the boundary condition
of undisturbed ow. A value of 20 nozzle diameters was
nally chosen along r. A triangular pave grid of approx.
9800 cells has been employed (Fig. 4), highly stretched to
resolve the species mass fraction, velocity, temperature
and pressure gradients in the boundary layer and within

234

M.V. De Bonis, G. Ruocco / Journal of Food Engineering 78 (2007) 230237

Fig. 4. Computational grid.

the food, induced by the heating, evaporation, impingement

and redirection of ow. A grid independence positive check
has also been performed on a 15,000 cells grid.
A nite-volume segregated solver with 2nd order
unsteady implicit formulation has been employed throughout, with the SIMPLEC pressurevelocity coupling, and
QUICK stencils for all other variables. The residuals were
kept to 1 103 for all variables, except for temperature,
1 105. The time step has been kept small to 1 103 s
to ensure stability; at each time step, the temperature
dependance was updated in Eq. (1). Execution time for
t = 300 s elapsed time was approx. 60 h on a Pentium Xeon
with two processor elements in serial mode (WindowsXP
OS, 3.0 GHz, 2 GB RAM). A specic in-house code was
devised to deal with water vapor transfer and interpolation
across the food interface, and incorporated in the software.

3.2. Flow and temperature eld

3. Results

The non-homogeneous heat transfer at the interface

favors a simultaneous vapor transfer across the interface
to the air ow, and the mass diusion of vapor or liquid
water in the impinged substrate. The peculiarity of the
dehydration by JI is emphasized by the compared examination of liquid water and water vapor mass fractions in
Fig. 6.
For t = 30 s, /w is function of r only, Fig. 6a, due to the
limited thickness of the substrate. The evaporation and
depletion of liquid water is evident in the stagnation region,
directly under the jet (at r = 0), where the temperature is

3.1. Conguration and material

A comparison with the available yet scarce literature
data (Braud, Moreira, & Castell-Perez, 2001; Moreira,
2001) has been tried: a baking process of a thin
(lsx = 1.85 mm) food substrate (corn tortilla) was congured, with Tj = 418 K, T0 = 298 K and uj = 40 m/s, at a
lsr = lj = 0.1 height. A corn starchwater mixture with
/s0 = 0.77 and /w0 = 0.23 was adopted.

From examination of Fig. 5a it is rst seen that after

t = 300 s the heating forms a gradual thermal gradient in
the entire substrate, varying from T = 358 K on the
exposed surface directly under the jet (at r = 0, x = lsx),
to T = 298 K at the tortillas bottom (at r = 0, x = 0), to
T = 303 K at the tortillas end side (at r = lsr). The heat/
mass transfer rates are therefore highly non-uniform along
the exposed surface, and the conduction in the substrate
contributes to lateral heat transfer.
The correspondent velocity distribution in Fig. 5b is
fully developed, showing all regions already denoted in
Fig. 1.
3.3. Moisture content

Fig. 5. (a) Qualitative temperature eld and (b) qualitative velocity eld at t = 300 s.

M.V. De Bonis, G. Ruocco / Journal of Food Engineering 78 (2007) 230237

235

Fig. 6. Quantitative plots of (a) /w and (b) /v isolines at t = 30 s.

highest. This conversion favors in part the diusion of

vapor in the food, Fig. 6b, below the stagnation region,
and where the wall jet region starts to form (for approx.
r>5 mm) the surface vapor is blown away by the air ow,
inducing more diusion within the food. The /v isolines
are densely packed along x, due to the high surface mass
transfer rate. Far from stagnation, the mass fraction of
vapor decreases, and for r > 10.0 cm a small vapor cloud
appears.
The eect of JI heating leads to complete /w drying after
t = 300 s. A residual /v transport in the wall jet region is
well evidenced in Fig. 7, while in the close-up of Fig. 8 a
non-monotone behavior is detected along r, due to the joint
eect of jet on the exposed surface, the internal diusion of
vapor along r and the removal from the side.
From the comparison with the available literature reference (Braud et al., 2001), a discrepancy has been found on
the process duration. It must be recalled that (Braud et al.,
2001) do not solve for the ow eld (an average heat trans-

fer mechanism is attributed at the surface), therefore the

present relatively high uj value has been reconstructed using
the cited bibliography through a local Nusselt number calculation based on jet diameter and height. In the present
conguration, after only 5 min the thin tortilla has lost
almost completely all liquid water, whereas a duration of
20 min was reported in Braud et al. (2001). This dierence
is attributed to the strongly dierent models compared here.
3.4. Evaluation of water activity
The importance of water activity aw in food processing
has been recalled earlier. aw is evaluated as the ratio
between the vapor pressure in the substrate and the vapor
pressure of pure water at the same temperature. The vapor
pressure in a given product varies with the anity of water
with food constituents: the greater the anity, the lower is
the vapor pressure as few water molecules are available to
be released upon processing. Solutes depress the vapor

Fig. 7. Quantitative plots of /v isolines at t = 300 s.

Fig. 8. /v map at t = 300 s.

236

M.V. De Bonis, G. Ruocco / Journal of Food Engineering 78 (2007) 230237

Fig. 9. Water activity aw maps at (a) t = 20 s and (b) t = 30 s.

pressure of the solvent: this depression is usually given by

Raoults law but in foods there are substantial deviations
from the ideal relationship.
A number of approaches have been taken insofar to estimate the water activity of a mixture, in order to predict it
using few characteristic parameters. But water activity
has never been calculated on a local basis: the knowledge
of the local distribution of aw is essential to food structure,
consistence, perishability, and to yield for product/process
optimization.
One of the empirical equations for calculating water
activity is the method of Grover (Barbosa-Ca`novas &
Vega-Mercado, 1996). With this method, dierent ingredients are assigned a sucrose equivalent conversion factor
S. This factor was based on experimental vapor pressures
measured in such ingredient solutions, hence in part it
incorporates corrections to Raoults law. Water activity is
assessed by the concentration ci of each ingredient,
multiplied by S factor for the specic ingredient, as in
Eq. (14)
aw 1:04  0:1

X


X
2
S i ci 0:0045
S i ci

The local depletion near the lateral edge of the tortilla

can be attributed to the particular ow eld, which relatively favors vapor transport at the end-side, as seen in
Figs. 6b and 7.
4. Conclusions
Dehydration in a food slab has been accomplished by an
impinging heated air jet. Timedependent governing
equations have been integrated to predict local moisture,
temperature and velocity distributions. The evaporation kinetics has been tackled by a simple Arrhenius
notation.
Coupled moisture and temperature gradients have been
shown to determine a strong process non-uniformity. A
local pseudo-water activity has also been computed, for a
thin corn tortilla. The non-monotone radial progress of
aw is attributed to the peculiar surface heat/mass transfer
mechanism. The model shows how the integration of transport and biochemical notations in foods can be employed
to pursue process optimization.

14

For the present case, S = 0.8 for corn starch. It must be observed, though, that as aw assessment is strongly dependent
on temperature, it should be carried out in equilibrium conditions: only pseudo-aw transient values can be calculated
for the drying process.
For the case at hand, after few seconds a rapid decrement is already detected, from an initial average value of
0.800  0.760 in the stagnation region (not shown). At
t = 20 s (Fig. 9a) the aw distribution is clearly inuenced
by the jet-oset: the lowest value of 0.700 is detected under
the stagnation region (uniform along x due to the x-wise
limited extension). Its progress is monotone with r, increasing up to 2 cm from the edge (maximum value 0.729), then
decreasing again very slightly. The same progress is found
for a later time t = 30 s (Fig. 9b). It is evident that even
such a short duration increase contributes to decisive dehydration, as the lowest and highest values are 0.589 and
0.625 in this case.

Acknowledgements
This work was funded by MIUR Italian Ministry of Scientic Research, grant no. 2004090750003 entitled Analysis of transport phenomena due to jet impingement on
substrates in industrial applications.
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