Computational Simulation of Heat Transfer in a Dip Shrink Tank Using Two Different Arrangements of Electrical Resistances

Abstract

Biohazard recontamination of food can occur in a meat processing plant during slicing, portioning, or racking. Subsequently, to protect them from external agents, not allow the loss of moisture contained in the product, and preserve its safety, they undergo a shrinking process; which consists of submerging in a tank with hot water at an approximate temperature of 87°C, for a certain time the food that has been wrapped with a heat shrink plastic, making it shrink. In this work, the behavior of heat transfer in a non-commercial shrink tank, built with two different arrangements of electrical resistances for water heating, is investigated. The study was carried out through numerical simulations with the implicit method of alternating directions (ADI). The results obtained from the heating times with their respective temperature distributions show that the arrangement with four resistances is the most efficient for the process of heating the water in the shrink tank, achieving a homogeneous temperature of 87°C, in times less than 9 minutes with a heat flux of q = 24.48 W. The validation of the simulations will be carried out in a subsequent work with experimental tests carried out in the shrink tank.