Consumer confidence in food safety reached a record low in 2024 due to food recalls and increased reporting on toxic ingredients, according to the International Food Information Council (Ref. 1), making it more important than ever for companies in the food & beverage industry to guarantee the safety of their products. Modeling and simulation allows companies to optimize their food testing, sterilizing, heating, and packaging processes, all while minimizing waste. Keep reading to see five industry examples that were presented at the COMSOL Conference 2024.
1. Evaluating Bacterial Lethality
Consumer demand for shelf-stable, long-lasting canned food has steadily increased over the years and is expected to continue trending upward, according to a recent study by Fortune Business Insights (Ref. 2). Food sterilization is important for manufacturers because any errors in the process could result in harmful, or even lethal, bacteria entering consumers’ food. BE CAE & TEST, a COMSOL Certified Consultant, developed a custom simulation app using the Application Builder in the COMSOL Multiphysics® software, that assesses the effectiveness of heat penetration inside canned food during sterilization to evaluate bacterial lethality. Their app helps food engineers to conduct canned food safety analyses using accurate physics-based models — without having to learn how to use simulation software.
When setting up their analysis in the app, food engineers can easily select from several 3D geometries of basic container shapes or import their own custom geometry; choose from various types of food products such as beans, corn, and tuna; and specify the thermal treatment. If reference data for the thermophysical properties of a particular food product isn’t available, it can easily be calculated by inputting percentages of its nutritional components, including carbohydrates, proteins, fats, fibers, and ash (mineral content). With the app, it is also possible to import experimental reference data for the retort temperature profile over time, or define it by specifying the temperature and duration of the heating ramp, thermal plateau phase, and final cooling.
BE CAE & TEST’s custom app for evaluating bacterial lethality in canned food, with a custom geometry of a rectangular tin can with tuna under study.
By entering the data of interest to the custom input fields, food engineers can use the app to calculate temperature changes over time during transient analysis to determine how heat penetration affects bacterial lethality in various canned goods. Bolstered by this information, they can then optimize food sterilization processes and reduce the risk of harmful bacteria entering our food.
Learn more about their work and this app here: “A COMSOL App to Analyze Bacteria Lethality During Sterilization Processes”
2. Optimizing Pasta Drying Conditions
For pasta manufacturers, the pasta drying process involves a series of time- and energy-consuming trials needed to identify optimal operating parameters to obtain a consistent and high-quality product. The world’s largest pasta producer, Barilla, collaborated with the University of Calabria in Italy to develop a model to predict temperature, moisture distribution, and structural changes during the drying process. Their model is used for optimizing drying processes to ensure product quality and minimize energy use.
The time it takes to dry pasta can vary significantly and depends on two parameters:
- Air temperature and relative humidity, ranging from 40°C to 90°C and 40% to 85%, respectively
- Fluctuation in air velocity
The model, which the team developed with a two-domain modeling approach, predicts the temperature and moisture distribution during the drying process in turbulent air conditions. To represent a “tortiglione” piece of pasta, the team used a 2D geometry in their simulations.
Basic geometry of a piece of pasta.
They used the finite element method to couple heat and mass transfer equations and made their simulations parametric to reflect typical industrial conditions. The model accounts for food shrinkage during drying. Overall, the team’s simulation predictions yielded a mean relative error of less than 9% when compared to the real-world results of the drying process.
Results of the shrinkage impact and the model validation.
Learn more about their work here: “A COMSOL App to Analyze Bacteria Lethality During Sterilization Processes”
3. Analyzing Liquid Food Package Degradation
Liquid food packages must safely preserve food without allowing the packaging to degrade when exposed to the liquid. The packaging is commonly constructed using paperboard as a core material, protective polymer layers against the food, and a thin aluminum layer used to seal the package through induction heating (IH). A team at Tetra Pak, the world’s leading food processing and packaging solutions company, modeled and simulated package material response during induction heating to understand how different attributes affect the material behavior of the packaging.
The anatomy of a carton package at Tetra Pak.
They used their model to simulate the coupling of heat and mass transport in paperboard during the IH-sealing process. The model also accounted for eddy currents through AC/DC magnetic fields, using the aluminum layer as a boundary condition. They used multiphysics couplings to determine how the drying of the board was affected by the internal gas pressure and how dry different areas of the paperboard were. Their simulations showed that less degradation due to moisture occurs when the board has a higher initial moisture ratio and is less dense, allowing vapors to escape more easily, which was observed in the top corner of the paperboard being the driest. The results of their simulations showed good agreement between the model predictions and experimental data. These findings allowed Tetra Pak to further improve their polymer model to decrease material waste.
Three simulations using varying internal pressure times show the moisture level at the top surface of the paperboard.
Learn more about their work here: “Simulating the Coupled Mass and Heat Transport in Paperboard During an Induction Sealing Process”
4. Improving Airflow in Ovens
Oven manufacturer UNOX SpA set out to find the most efficient strategy for estimating airflow in oven chambers with high accuracy and minimal computational cost. As part of that work, the team used the COMSOL Multiphysics® software to conduct a study comparing various fluid dynamics modeling strategies.
The comparison involved three steps. First, they ran a study with a simplified domain of a pipe and a fan with a frozen rotor, which had a low computational cost and allowed for experimental verification. Next, they ran a comprehensive simulation with the complex geometry of a real oven fan, including a frozen rotor and heat transfer study, which was highly accurate but also computationally demanding. Finally, they ran an analysis that was similar to the previous one, but with the velocity profile imposed without simulating a rotating fan, thus reducing the computational cost.
Airflow in an oven chamber.
The team analyzed the results of the three steps and saw that the third strategy resulted in significantly accurate results with minimal computational time, thereby making it the most efficient technique for their work.
Learn more about their work here: “Fluid Dynamic Modeling in Oven Chambers: Balancing Accuracy and Computational Efficiency”
5. Working on Overcoming Pasteurization Challenges
Food products with low water content pose a safety issue due to potential contamination by heat-resistant microorganisms, making typical pasteurization methods such as steam or hot air ineffective. Microwave heating can be used as an alternative method, but it’s a challenging task due to the low dielectric properties of dry food products. A team from SAIREM, a world leader in industrial microwave and radio-frequency applications, and Oniris Nantes, a higher education institute in France, developed a model to study the complexities of this process.
Their model consisted of paprika powder in a quartz tube heated by a 915 MHz single-mode microwave applicator to analyze the electric field distribution and local temperatures within the tube. The team ran simulations with several pairs of dielectric property values, revealing that uncertainties in the dielectric constant resulted in larger temperature variations compared to those in the loss factor. They also measured the thermophysical properties of paprika, including density, heat, and thermal conductivity, in a real-world study, and found that the results were in close agreement. This emphasizes the importance of accurately measuring the dielectric properties of foods with low water content in order to accurately predict temperatures needed to produce a safe food product.
Paprika powder in a quartz tube model is heated by a microwave cavity operating at 915 MHz, showing temperature differences due to uncertainties on the dielectric constant.
Learn more about their work here: “Influence of Dielectric Constant on Low-Moisture Food Pasteurization in a 915 MHz Microwave Cavity”
Multiphysics Modeling Supports Food Safety
Here we saw five examples of how engineers from the food & beverage industry use multiphysics modeling and simulation apps to analyze and optimize products and processes related to food safety. Of course, this list only scratches the surface of what you can model in this area. For more inspiration, check out our Food and Beverage industry page.
References
- Consumer confidence in food safety hit a record low in 2024. (2024, September 19). International Food Information Council. https://ific.org/media-information/press-releases/food-safety/.
- The canned food market in the U.S. is projected to grow significantly. (2025, April 14). Fortune Business Insights. https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/canned-food-market-103258
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