Journal of Food Engineering 146 (2015) 99106

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Food Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jfoodeng

Experimental study of heat and mass transfer phenomena during the

contact heating of solid food models
J. Cernela a,b, B. Heyd a,b, S. Keller a,b, J.L. Bailleul c, M.N. Maillard a,b, C. Bonazzi a,b, B. Broyart a,b,
a

AgroParisTech, UMR1145 Ingnierie Procds Aliments, 91300 Massy, France

INRA, UMR1145 Ingnierie Procds Aliments, 91300 Massy, France
c
Laboratoire de Thermocintique de Nantes, UMR CNRS 6607, 44000 Nantes cedex 06, France
b

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 4 June 2014
Received in revised form 20 August 2014
Accepted 3 September 2014
Available online 16 September 2014
Keywords:
Pan frying
Contact heating device
Solid food model

a b s t r a c t
Experimental measurements of temperature rises and water loss kinetics within two types of solid food
models during contact heating are discussed. A contact heating device was specially designed to reproduce the operating conditions encountered during domestic pan frying. Two different solid food models
were used for the experiments: (i) a non porous solid gel containing an oil-in-water emulsion without
crust formation at its lower surface during heating, and (ii) a cereal batter (water with our) which exhibited crust formation and the development of an internal porous structure during heating. Under similar
heating conditions, these products displayed very different drying and thermal behaviours. The temperature of the gel emulsion never exceeded 100 C and was independent of the heating surface temperature
in the experimental range from 160 C to 260 C. This limitation in product temperature rise was
explained by the evaporation of liquid water exuding from the product in the interstitial space between
the heating surface and the products lower surface. By contrast, a crust was formed at the lower surface
of the cereal batter, reducing the drying rate of the product at this location and allowing the product to
reach temperatures higher than 100 C.
2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Food products are often subjected to numerous heat treatments
at both the industrial and domestic levels. This is especially true for
processed food products which rst undergo thermal treatment
during their industrial preparation (by cooking, drying or frying,
etc.) and are then reheated at home before eating (by conventional
hot air heating in an oven, deep- or pan-frying, or microwave heating, etc.). All these reheating modes have been widely studied in
terms of transfer phenomena, with the exception of domestic
pan-frying on which very little data are available in the literature
(Oroszvari et al., 2005; Ou and Mittal, 2007; Dhall and Datta,
2011). On related topics, the only studies found concerned contact
heating (or grilling) in the out-of-home catering sector (Ikedalia
et al., 1996; Pan et al., 2000; Gupta, 2001; Adler-Nissen, 2002;
Pyle, 2005; Huang, 2012) or the impact of pan-frying conditions
on the quality of heated products but with no special emphasis
on the heat and mass transfer phenomena that occur during heating (e.g., Kalogeropoulos et al., 2006; Sioen et al., 2006; Boskou
Corresponding author at: AgroParisTech Centre de Massy, 1 avenue des
Olympiades, 91744 Massy cedex, France. Tel.: + 33 (0) 1 69 96 51 24.
E-mail address: bertrand.broyart@agroparistech.fr (B. Broyart).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2014.09.007
0260-8774/ 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

et al., 2006; Haak et al., 2007; Soupas et al., 2007; Messina et al.,
2009; Clerjon et al., 2011). However, some of these studies did
emphasise the drastic effect of pan-frying conditions on the nutritional and sensory properties of the products. This effect could be
related to the very high temperatures reached by the heating surface during the thermal treatment (up to 300 C, as shown by
Cernela et al., 2014). In this context, a clearer understanding of
the heat and mass transfer phenomena which occur during domestic pan-frying might help to determine rational strategies to
improve the sensory and nutritional qualities of products heated
using this heat treatment mode.
The rst reason why transfer phenomena during domestic panfrying have received so little attention is probably due to the difculty in achieving the non-invasive measurement of contact heat
transfer phenomena, i.e. between the product and the heating surface. When two solids are placed in contact, a temperature drop is
noted at the interface between the solids, which can be attributed
to a thermal contact resistance. This resistance is principally due
to the roughness effects of solid surfaces, leading to the existence
of contact spots interspersed with air-lled gaps (Madhusudana,
1996). In the case of food products, a further complexity arises from
the fact that this resistance may change drastically during heating,
depending on (i) the mechanical behaviour of the food product dur-

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J. Cernela et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 146 (2015) 99106

ing heating and its potential deformation, (ii) the presence or not of
oil in the pan, and (iii) the occurrence of interfering phenomena
such as a release of exudates from the product during cooking or
the formation of a crust on the lower surface of the product. In food
engineering applications, the method generally used to measure
the contact heat ux consists in positioning a surface heat ux sensor between the heating surface and the product (Housova and
Topinka, 1985; Pan and Singh, 2002) but the main drawback of this
method is that it is invasive, as the presence of the heat ux sensor
between the pan and the product locally modies the physical (and
hence thermal) contact between the two materials.
The second reason why there is a lack of studies on the transfer
phenomena which occur during domestic pan-frying is the marked
variability inherent to this mode of heat treatment. This variability
is rst of all due to the wide variety of heating hobs (gas, electric,
vitro-ceramic, induction) and pans (which mainly differ in terms of
their dimensions and of the metals or alloys used for their manufacture) that may be used at home, and also to the very broad range
of food products which can be heated by pan-frying. Unless recent
test procedures to evaluate the heating performances of domestic
pan-frying have taken account of this variability (Cernela et al.,
2014), this factor limits the application of the results obtained in
a particular study to a broader context and partly explains the
problems encountered in obtaining generic results on domestic
pan-frying.
The aim of the present study was therefore to present and discuss an original experimental procedure which can produce reliable data on the thermal and drying behaviour of food products
during contact heating. To circumvent the variability inherent to
domestic operations, an original contact heating laboratory device
has been developed that, in a controlled and reproducible way, can
reproduce the operating conditions observed at a domestic scale as
characterised by Cernela et al. (2014): a heating surface temperature ranging from 150 C to 300 C and heating power up to
50 kW/m2. Furthermore, to obtain more generalizable results,
two different solid food models were used for the heating tests.
It was necessary for these two products to be as simple as possible
in terms of their structure and composition, and they were

formulated to obtain radically different thermal and drying behaviours when placed in contact with a hot surface. The rst product
was a thermostable solid oil-in-water gel emulsion (referred to
below as a gel emulsion), non-porous at the mesoscale level, containing a large amount of water having very low afnity with the
lipid phase and with no crust formation on its lower surface during
contact heating (water and oil being the two principal ingredients
in the recipe). The second model was a cereal batter of simple formulation, which developed an internal porous structure during
heating and was subject to crust formation when placed in contact
with a hot surface.
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Laboratory device for contact heating
In order to perform experiments under controlled conditions, a
laboratory contact heating device was specially designed. It comprised three 20 cm-diameter metal discs rmly tightened with 8
bolts (Fig. 1a and b) and placed inside a calcium silicate insulation
jacket (Silicate L, Sored UPM, Messein, France). The rst disc was
made of 5 mm-thick stainless-steel (Type 304), and the second
was a 6.5 mm-thick copper disc. A ZUZ I heating wire, 3 m long
and 2 mm in diameter (Thermocoax, Suresnes, France), delivering
a heating power up to 2300 W, was inserted into the bottom surface
of the copper disc after precise machining of its surface, the high
thermal conductivity of copper enabling the delivery of uniform
heating power up to 73 kW/m2. The third disc was made of
8 mm-thick stainless-steel. A cylindrical hole was drilled in the precise centre of this last disc to enable the insertion of an 8 mm-high
and 12 mm-diameter Inconel 600 cylinder (whose thermal conductivity was very close to that of stainless steel) (Fig. 1c). This cylinder
was in fact made up of two half cylinders, allowing the precise positioning between them of a very thin (50 lm) K-type thermocouple
at 0.35 mm under the surface of the cylinder (Kayme, Guyancourt,
France), the measured temperature being assumed to be equal to
the heating surface temperature. This thermocouple also acted as
a sensor so that the temperature of the heating surface could be

Fig. 1. Schematic representation of the contact heating device.

J. Cernela et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 146 (2015) 99106

101

controlled by adjusting the heating power using a SG4 44120 phase

angle controller (Celduc, Sorbiers, France). This heating device
enabled the heating of small solid or liquid food samples (up to a
diameter of 8 cm) by contact with a stainless-steel heating surface
kept at a constant temperature during heating, whatever the nature
of the heated product and the quality of thermal contact between
the two materials. It could also be used with a xed heating power
(between 0 and 73 kW/m2) in order to reproduce the conditions
encountered in a domestic setting.

(internal diameter 78 mm; height 15.5 mm) which had been

placed on the heating surface 1 min before the batter was poured.
The batter was then heated for 15 min with no ipping.
For both solid food models, the initial sample temperature
(before being placed or poured in the heating surface) was the
ambient temperature: 20 C 2 C.

2.2. Solid food model #1: gel emulsion

For both products, the total water loss was evaluated regularly
during heating by weighing the entire heating device with a
SG8001 precision balance (Mettler Toledo, Viroay, France) as
shown in Fig. 2. For the gel emulsion, moisture content gradients
were also estimated after 5, 10 and 15 min of heating by cutting
the product horizontally into three slices of 3 mm (bottom portion
of the product in contact with the heating surface), 5 mm (central
portion of the product) and 8 mm (remaining upper portion of the
product), respectively. The moisture content of each slice was then
determined by weighing the slices before and after complete desiccation (for 17 h in a ventilated oven at 103 C). All measurements
of total water loss and slice moisture content were performed in
triplicate in order to check their repeatability.
For temperature measurements, the hollow Teon cylindrical
moulds around the products were instrumented with three T-type
thermocouples (125 lm diameter, Omega Engineering, Stamford,
USA) stretched horizontally at precise positions along the z axis:
1 mm, 3.5 mm and 8 mm 0.5 mm above the heating surface, the
thickness of both products being circa 16 mm (Fig. 2). To ensure
precise and reproducible measurements in the products during
heating, the thermocouples were positioned before pouring the
liquid cereal batter or the emulsion (before gelling) into the Teon
moulds. The temperatures were then recorded every second using
a 34970A data logger (Agilent, Massy, France). The temperature of
the upper surface of the product was also measured using a CT
infrared pyrometer (Optris GmbH, Berlin, Germany) positioned
20 cm above the product (the emissivity of the product being xed
at 0.90 for measurement). All temperature measurements were
performed in triplicate in order to check their repeatability.

Ultrapure water (Simplicity 185, Millipore, Billerica, USA)

(66.4%, w/w) and Tween 40 (1.8%, w/w) were added to sodium alginate (Algogel 6041, Degussa, Germany) (1.6%, w/w) pre-dispersed
in sunower oil (Coeur de Tournesol, Lesieur, Coudekerque, France)
(30.2%, w/w). This pre-emulsion was homogenized at 24 000 rpm
for 6 min using a T25 Ultra-Turrax blender tted with a S25N18G dispersing element (IKA, Staufen, Germany). About 95 g of
the emulsion were then cast in a hollow cylindrical Teon mould
(78 mm diameter and 15.5 mm high) with a removable bottom.
The upper surface of the mould was covered with a dialysis membrane (Spectra/Por Dialysis Membrane Standard RC tubing 68 kD,
Spectrum Laboratories, Rancho Dominguez, USA) which allowed
the input of a calcium chloride solution (30 g/L) for circa 90 h in
order to achieve complete gelling. The nal product was a very rm
gel composed of 62.3% water (wet basis), 34.5% sunower oil, 1.7%
Tween 40 and 1.5% alginate with a very high mechanical resistance
during heating (as checked during preliminary tests). The gel samples were then stored at 4 C and brought to ambient temperature
just before the heating tests. The composition and structure of this
solid food model were xed in order to obtain a non-porous (at
mesoscopic scale) and thermostable solid food model with a high
water content and a very low afnity of water with the other ingredients in the product (lipid phase). Water and oil being the two
major ingredients used in the recipe, this product could therefore
be expected to heat without any crust formation when placed in
contact with a hot surface. This solid food model was also developed to enable further studies of lipid thermal degradation in the
product during pan-frying under controlled conditions.
2.3. Solid food model #2: cereal batter with a simple formulation
33 g of wheat our (Type 55) and 67 g of liquid egg (both purchased at a local supermarket) were mixed vigorously for 2 min in
a 150 mL beaker in order to obtain a homogeneous liquid batter.
This batter was expected to form a crust when placed in contact
with a hot surface and its internal structure was expected to
change from a viscous liquid to a solid porous product.

2.5. Water loss and product temperature measurements

3. Experimental results
3.1. Qualitative observations of product behaviour during contact
heating
To enable a better analysis of the experimental measurements,
some qualitative observations were made concerning structural
changes of the two solid foods during contact heating trials.

2.4. Protocol for contact heating experiments

During this study, heating trials were performed under two
conditions: (i) pre-heating at 180 C (for circa 15 min) and once
the product was placed on the hot surface, heating at a constant
medium heating power of 3500 W/m2 in order to maintain the
heating surface temperature close to 170 C, or (ii) pre-heating at
240 C (for circa 15 min) and heating at a constant high heating
power of 8000 W/m2 in order to maintain the heating surface temperature close to 240 C.
For the gel emulsion, at the end of the preheating step, the bottom of the Teon mould was removed and the product (still in its
mould) was placed gently on the heating surface. The product was
then heated for 15 min with no ipping.
For the cereal batter, at the end of the preheating step, 80 g of
liquid batter were poured into a hollow cylindrical Teon mould

Fig. 2. Instrumentation of the contact heating device.

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J. Cernela et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 146 (2015) 99106

In the case of the gel emulsion (Fig. 3a), the dimensions and
internal structure of the product remained unchanged, and no
swelling or collapse of the product was observed. During heating,
a ow of vapour was emitted continuously from the small space
between the inner wall of the Teon mould and the peripheral surface of the gel emulsion cylinder. This indicated a vaporization of
liquid water that was continuously released from the lower surface
of the gel emulsion during contact heating.
By contrast, the cereal batter presented signicant overall
swelling during heating (between 16 mm and 24 mm during heating tests at medium or high heat) and its internal structure changed drastically from a viscous dough to a heterogeneous
structure (Fig. 3b). The nal structure included (i) a solid crust in
contact with the heating surface, (ii) a central portion (circa twothirds of the thickness of the nal product) consisting of a solid
porous phase, with the gas phase taking the form of column bubbles, and (iii) a upper portion of non-baked batter. The thickness
of the crust ranged from 2 mm (trials at medium heat) to 4 mm
(trials at high heat). The presence of the column bubbles indicated
the development of a gas phase structure from gas nuclei close to
the bottom surface of the product. The gas phase was then driven
to the products upper surface by pressure gradients, which were
probably induced by high thermal gradients near the bottom surface of the product. This particular porous structure had also been
reported by Pyle (2005) during the contact heating of crumpets.
3.2. Heating surface temperature variations during tests
Measurements of the heating surface temperatures during heating tests at medium (3500 W/m2) and high (8000 W/m2) heating
power, and with the two different solid food models, are plotted
in Fig. 4. The repeatability of these measurements was excellent.
Although a constant heating power was supplied during the experiments, because the temperature of the products lower surface
increased and the quality of thermal contact between the heating
surface and the product changed over time, the heat ux delivered
to the product, and the temperature of the heating surface, varied
as a function of heating time, as shown in Fig. 4.
Whatever the heating power, this temperature rst slightly
decreased (from 180 C and 240 C, respectively, in the trials at
medium and high heat) during the rst minute of heating when

Fig. 4. Variations in the temperature of the heating surface during contact heating
trials at medium (3500 W/m2) or high (8000 W/m2) heating power with solid food
models.

the cold product was put in contact with the hot surface. At a medium heat, the heating surface temperature remained nearly constant after two minutes and equal to 165 C and 170 C with the
gel emulsion and cereal batter, respectively. At a high heat, after
a short initial decrease, the heating surface temperature rose
slightly but regularly during all the heating trials, and a signicant
difference was seen between the two products: from 220 C to
245 C with the gel emulsion and from 230 C to 260 C with the
cereal batter. To explain this difference, the quality of the physical
contact between the heating surface and the product needs to be
taken into account, as well as the evolution of the quality of this
contact due to interfering phenomena occurring between the product and the heating surface, such as (i) structural changes in the
cereal batter (from a liquid batter to a solid porous product with
further crust formation), and (ii) exudation of liquid water and
oil from the gel emulsion. In summary, the better the thermal
contact and the higher the temperature difference between the
product and the heating surface, the more energy was exchanged

Fig. 3. Qualitative observations of product behaviours during contact heating.

J. Cernela et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 146 (2015) 99106

between the heating surface and the product and hence the lower
the temperature of the heating surface. During this study, the
energy exchange between the heating surface and the gel emulsion
was greater than with the cereal batter, despite the fact that the
latter was initially in a liquid phase and thus had very good physical contact with the heating surface. This experimental observation is difcult to explain at this point and will be discussed later
after considering the rises in product temperature and water loss
kinetics.

103

These differences in total water loss kinetics can also be

explained by the composition of the two products and in particular, by the different levels of afnity of water with the other ingredients for the products of concern. In the case of the gel emulsion,
the physico-chemical afnity of water with the lipid phase was, as
expected, very low and probably led to an increased level of water
loss during heating in comparison with the mass transfer phenomena occurring within the cereal batter during heating.
3.4. Product temperature rise kinetics

3.3. Product water loss kinetics

Total water loss kinetics from both solid foods can be seen in
Fig. 5. With both products, the higher the heating power, the
higher the total water loss, with signicant differences between
the trials at 3500 and 8000 W/m2. Whatever the heating power,
the total water loss was signicantly higher with the gel emulsion
than with the cereal batter (up to 35% and 15% of total mass,
respectively, during trials at high heating). This nding may seem
surprising since the internal structure of the cereal batter quickly
took the form of an open porosity structure (with a column bubble
gas phase) which might be expected to enhance vapour transport
from the bottom to the upper surfaces of the product, whereas
the structure of the gel emulsion remained dense and tight during
heating.
When considering variations in the moisture content of the
three slices of 3 mm (bottom portion), 5 mm (central portion)
and 8 mm thick (upper portion) of the gel emulsion (Fig. 6), and
despite the variability of the initial moisture contents in the different slices due to the manufacturing process of the product (particularly the gelling step), it should be noted that the most signicant
variations in moisture content were only measured in the rst slice
of the gel in contact with the heating surface. Water loss from the
gel emulsion could therefore be explained by a vaporization of
liquid water continuously exuding from the product in the interstitial space between the gel emulsion and the heating surface. This
also explains the emission of a continuous ow of vapour from
the small lateral space between the inner wall of the Teon mould
and the peripheral surface of the gel emulsion, as discussed above.
In the case of the cereal batter, the absence of a lateral space
between the product (initially liquid) and the inner wall of Teon
mould did not permit this mode of water loss. This partly explains
why the total water loss from the cereal batter was smaller than
from the gel emulsion.

The kinetics of the temperature rises measured at different

locations in both the solid foods during medium or high heating
are plotted in Fig. 7. The gel emulsion and cereal batter presented
very different temperature variation trends during heating. Whatever the heating power, the temperature in the gel emulsion
always remained below 100 C at all locations (even close to the
heating surface) whereas the temperature of the cereal batter rose
rapidly above 100 C in the zone close to the heating surface. It
should also be pointed out that the temperature rise kinetics
within the gel emulsion were nearly independent of the heating
power (or of the temperature of the heating surface within the
range 160260 C) whatever the location, and even in the rst millimetres above the heating surface. At locations 1 mm and 3.5 mm
above the heating surface, the gel temperature asymptotically
tended towards 100 C (boiling temperature of water at atmospheric pressure). This observation conrms the existence of a ow
of liquid water continuously exuding from the gel in the space
between the solid and the heating surface. As long as heating
occurred, liquid water migrated within the gel emulsion and was
vaporised when reaching the heating surface, as already discussed.
These coupled heat and mass transfer phenomena resulted in the
temperature of the gel emulsion never exceeding 100 C. Mass
transfer within the product and water evaporation at the lower
surface of the product limited its overall heating. The difference
in heating power supply no longer had any effect upon the rise
in product temperature but only on its total water loss (see Fig. 5).
With the cereal batter, the temperature of the heating surface
had a signicant impact on the kinetics of temperature rise at
the rst two locations above the heating surface (at 1 mm and
3.5 mm above the bottom surface of the product). At these locations, a plateau at a constant temperature near 100 C was
observed, whose duration varied according to the distance from
the bottom surface and to the level of heating power. This stage

Fig. 5. Variations in total water loss from both solid food models during contact heating tests at medium (3500 W/m2) or high (8000 W/m2) heat.

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J. Cernela et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 146 (2015) 99106

Fig. 6. Variations in moisture content (% wet basis) of the upper, centre and bottom slices of the gel emulsion during contact heating at medium (3500 W/m2) or high
(8000 W/m2) heat.

at a constant temperature could be very short, as at 1 mm above

the heating surface during trials at high heating power (8000 W/
m2), but could also last for more than 10 min as at 3.5 mm above
the heating surface during trials at medium heating power
(3500 W/m2). It was then followed by an increase in the product
temperature to above 100 C which was hardly dependent on the
heating power value. For example, the nal product temperature
reached 160 C at 1 mm above the heating surface during trials
at 8000 W/m2. This phenomenon is classically observed in the case
of coupled heat and mass transfer phenomena within food or biological products. It corresponds to a stage in the drying process
when water loss is limited by internal water diffusion (often
observed with biological products when water in the product is
physico-chemically bound to dry matter). The energy transferred
by conduction is hence used to raise product sensible energy, leading to a local rise in product temperature. The observable result of
these transfer phenomena was the formation of a crust close to the
heated surface which propagated within the products as heating
continued. Unlike the gel emulsion, heating power had a clear incidence on product temperature rise kinetics as well as on product
total water loss kinetics.
At this level of interpretation of the results, the measurements
of the heating surface temperatures during heating (see Fig. 4)

can be analysed in further details. A difference was indeed noted

between trials at medium heat (where the heating surface temperature was nearly constant and equal to circa 170 C for both solid
food models) and trials at high heat (where this temperature
increased by circa 30 C for both solid food models). Different heat
and mass transfer phenomena controlled the trends of variation of
the heating surface temperature: the heat delivered by the heating
wire (varying between 3500 and 8000 W/m2 for trials either at
medium or high heat) and the heat transferred by contact to the
lower surface of the product used either (i) to increase the product
sensible energy or (ii) to vaporize the ow of liquid water exuding
from the product during heating. At medium heat, the total energy
delivered by the heating system was transferred by contact to the
product during the trial. There was no limitation to this energy
transfer. During trials at high heat, the limitations inherent to
internal diffusion of water within both solid food models limited
the above mentioned energy transfer between the heating surface
and the product. In these conditions, the liquid ow of water exuding from both solid food models and the associated energy consumed by the vaporization of this liquid water ow could not
increase in proportion to the heat delivered by the heating system.
The heat delivered by the heating system became then higher than
the heat received by the lower surface of the product and the

J. Cernela et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 146 (2015) 99106

105

Fig. 7. Variations in temperature at three locations in the solid food models (positions in mm from the bottom surface) and at the upper surface of solid food models (surf.)
during contact heating tests at medium (3500 W/m2) and high heat (8000 W/m2).

temperature of the heating surface tended to increase slightly during the trial.
4. Conclusion
The design of a laboratory contact heating device made it possible to obtain precise and repeatable temperature measurements of
the heating surface and the kinetics of temperature rises and water
losses with two types of solid food models during contact heating.
This device enabled contact heating trials to be performed at either
a constant heating surface temperature or with a constant heating
power, and moreover, under conditions close to those observed
during domestic pan-frying. The experimental data recorded with
two solid food models produced interesting results regarding the
coupled heat and mass transfer phenomena which occur during
such contact heating conditions. The results thus indicated radically different kinetics of temperature rise as a function of moisture transfer regimes within the product. In the case of a gel
emulsion, the temperature of the product never exceeded 100 C
at any position in the product, even very close to the heating surface. The temperature rise was limited by liquid water evaporation
in the interstitial space between the product and the heating surface. The level of heating power therefore had an inuence on total

water loss but not on the kinetics of temperature rise under these
experimental conditions. In the case of a cereal batter, both water
loss and product temperature rises varied as a function of heating
power. A crust formed on the bottom surface of the product and
propagated within it as heating continued, leading to a rise in temperature within the product which depended on the level of heating power.
Following this experimental study, a theoretical study now
needs to be carried out in order to develop a coupled heat and mass
transfer model so that we can conrm the proposed transfer mechanisms and reproduce the observed experimental results, particularly with respect to the evaporation of liquid water and the
emission of water vapour from the bottom surface of the gel emulsion. Complementary studies could also be performed using the
heating device developed during the present study in order to evaluate the inuence of operating conditions on the quality changes
that affect solid food products during contact heating.
Acknowledgements
This work was funded by the French National Research Agency
(ANR) under its Alimentation et Industries Alimentaires programme; project Dominove ANR-09-ALIA-002.

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J. Cernela et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 146 (2015) 99106

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