Examination of thermo-physical and material property interactions in cereal foams by means of Boltzmann modeling techniques

Cereal foam is a high complex material undergoing several temperature-dependent processes under thermal treatment, such as phase transitions, biochemical reactions and structural changes. Simultaneous heat and mass transfer plays an important role to investigate optimization studies in cereal-based foams. In porous media such as cereal foams, thermal conduction is of minor impact on the overall heat transfer, since the major part of heat is transferred through the gas phase filled with water vapor. This becomes evident comparing the thermal diffusivities of solid and gaseous components of the foam, where the difference is in the order of five magnitudes. The objective of this study is to model the coupled heat and mass diffusion processes in cereal-based foam under thermal treatment by means of Lattice Boltzmann methods. The proposed model is then used to perform parameter variation studies, showing the impact of material property changes offering the possibility on optimizing heat transfer through the foam.