A tube-in-tube food pasteurizer modelling for a digital twin application

Abstract

The process control in food industry plays an essential role to guarantee safety and quality of the manufactured food products. In order to increase the control possibility, the “Digital Twin” approach can be implemented in several food equipment, which can have a model that replies the real machine functioning. In this study a tube in tube pasteurizer has been modelled considering thermo-fluid dynamic parameters and conditions in order to simulate a beverage pasteurization process. The proposed model considers the use of possible non-newtonian fluids as it frequently happens in the food industry. After the model validation, a series of temperature and pressure probes located on the real plant and a data acquisition module will give in the future a comparison between real and simulated data in order to control the process status and avoid safety issues. In this way the operators will be able to act before something get wrong, without food product loosing.