Transport phenomena in food engineering:: basic concepts and advances

Food Engineering development is related to the knowledge advances of different areas of Chemical Engineering and other engineering fields. One of these areas is Transport Phenomena, and the advances in mathematical analysis and computer tools help to solve complex problems involving momentum, heat and mass transfer. Transport Phenomena applied to food processing presents special challenges regarding the complexity of biological material and how it changes during the application of different transformation or preservation treatments. Study of the basic concepts of Transport Phenomena and their applications to analyzing, predicting and designing any process is an important step in the advance of Food Engineering. Some of those basic concepts and examples of recent applications and research orientations are presented in this paper. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.