Food thermal distribution-based control of industrial freezers

There is a growing need for advanced solutions of freezer control based on multi-criteria decisions (energy and quality). One of the challenges is to propose a reliable non-intrusive method to measure temperature and ice distribution of food at the freezer exit. In this paper is proposed an innovative approach permitting to evaluate the ice distribution from superficial temperature measurements. It involves submitting the frozen food, immediately at the freezer exit, to a sudden pulse of heat flux and to record its superficial thermal response. From this response, the temperature distribution-and consequently its corresponding ice distribution- of the frozen food at the exit can be estimated thanks a minimization procedure. Beyond controlling final product quality, such an approach could provide in the near future valuable information on freezer operation. The relevancy of this approach requires a preliminary model-based numerical assessment which is the subject of this work.