AN OVERVIEW OF THE APPLICATION OF MICROWAVE IN THERMAL FOOD PROCESSING

AN OVERVIEW OF THE APPLICATION OF MICROWAVE IN THERMAL FOOD PROCESSING

Mwanle, G. C., Dabels, N., Majak, C. N, Shok, L. P. and Damar, I

Department of Home and Rural Economics,

Plateau State College of Agriculture, Garkawa, Nigeria.

ABSTRACT

Microwave ovens are commonplace in households and are established there as devices for everyday use. Their primary function is the reheating of previously cooked or prepared meals. The relative combination of microwaves with other heating systems should enhance their potential for a complete cooking device that could replace conventional ovens. Unfortunately, in industry the distribution of microwave processes is still few. Nevertheless, successful microwave applications range over a great spectrum of all thermal food processes.
The most prominent advantages of microwave heating are the reachable acceleration and time savings and the possible volume instead of surface heating. Reasons mentioned for the failure of industrial microwave applications include high energy costs, relatively low research budgets,  lack of microwave engineering knowledge and of complete microwave heating models and their calculation facilities. The latter disadvantage has been partly overcome by the exponentially growing calculating power which makes it possible to compute more and more realistic models by numerical methods. The determination of dielectric properties of food substances by experiments and theoretical approaches is an important task for realistic calculations. The best test for numerical calculations is experiments, which yield the real temperature distribution within the product, which is really important especially in pasteurization and sterilization. 

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