A versatile simulator for defrosting, convective and boiling drying during hot air frying process

A versatile simulator takes into account four major stages: defrosting, warm-up, and convective and boiling drying. This dynamic model considers that a frozen prefried french fries has three compartments: a central compartment (#1) with high water content, a peripheral compartment (#3) corresponding to the prefried dry crust, and an intermediate compartment (#2) appears during frying, filled with water vapour. Convective and boiling drying and freezing are modeled. The predicting model has been identified based on the triplicates of three different modalities. The resulting predictions have been experimentally validated.