Designing, Modeling, and Optimizing Processes to Ensure Microbial Safety and Stability Through Emerging Technologies
Abstract This chapter focuses on the modeling aspects of processing technologies for the purpose of designing and optimizing emerging food processes that ensure food safety and stability. Modeling is an important tool to assess the efficiency of these processes due to their complex Multiphysics nature that hinders the understanding based only on trial-and-error experimentation. In order to study the effect of processing on safety, Multiphysics models must be coupled with microbiological models. Numerical simulations can illustrate spatial distribution of governing process variables and lethal agents, and their combined effect on pathogens, enhancing the understanding of the complex phenomena occurring during treatment. The underlying challenge is the lack of state-of-the-art models applicable to broad spectrum of microbial organisms for accurate description of treatment history.