Theoretic analysis and experimental study on the mechanism of moisture movement during vacuum cooling of cooked meat

Vacuum cooling is a complicated heat and mass transfer process. Based on the theory of energy and mass balance, a simplified moisture movement model for vacuum cooling of cooked meat was developed. Vacuum cooling of cooked meat with cylindrical shape was carried out to obtain the variations of temperature and pressure. From the results, it can be found that the simulation results of temperature agree with the experimental data well, the maximum deviation between the simulated and the experimental data is within 5%, which shows that moisture movement model can be used to predict the temperature and pressure distributions within cooked meat during vacuum cooling. In addition, the calculated and experimental results suggest that total pressure differences within cooked meat and between cooked meat and vacuum chamber are the major driving forces. Therefore, in order to increase vacuum cooling rate, the pressure in the vacuum chamber should be reduced for the increment of driving forces of moisture movement during vacuum cooling of cooked meat.