ABSTRACT:
Food products are processed in order to prolong their shelf life and to maintain or even improve their natural qualities such as flavor and color. Decomposition of food is mainly due to microorganisms and enzymes. Consumers look for additive-free food products that maintain their organoleptic properties. This has promoted the development of new technologies for food processing. One emerging technology is High Hydrostatic Pressure, as it has turned out to be very effective in prolonging the shelf life of foods without losing its properties. Other applications of high-pressure technology on food processing are the ones that deal with ice-water transitions: high-pressure freezing, high-pressure thawing and preservation in a non-frozen state at subzero temperatures. High-Pressure Shift Freezing (in which phase transition occurs as a result of a change of pressure) is particularly interesting and advantageous compared to classical freezing, because supercooling occurs after the pressure release, throughout the whole volume and not only on the surface. Therefore, small granular shaped ice crystals are formed and distributed homogeneously throughout the sample. We will explain different ways of approaching the mathematical modeling of these processes and show some results.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
Angel Manuel Ramos works on controllabillty, stabilization, optimization and differential games (Nash Equilibria) for systems governed by PDEs. He is also interested in mathematical modeling and simulation of some problems arising in food industry and veterinary epidemiology, collaborating with physicists, chemists and veterinarians.
http://www.mat.ucm.es/~aramosol/