Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies 23 (2014) 156–163

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Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ifset

Heat transfer analysis of pasteurization of bottled beer in a tunnel

pasteurizer using computational fluid dynamics
E. Bhuvaneswari, C. Anandharamakrishnan ⁎
Food Engineering Department, CSIR—Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Mysore 570 020, India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Beer is one of the most widely consumed alcoholic beverages in the world. Pasteurization is an important unit
Received 30 June 2011 operation in beer processing that inactivates the spoilage microorganisms present in beer thereby extending
Accepted 12 March 2014 its shelf life. It is difficult to determine the temperature profile and slowest heating zone (i.e. minimum heating
Available online 22 March 2014
region) inside the bottle during industrial scale tunnel pasteurization. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD)
Editor Proof Receive Date 10 April 2014
modeling can be used as a tool to determine the temperature distribution pattern inside the bottled beer. This
study is unique in terms of using the actual thermophysical properties of beer unlike in earlier published
Keywords: works. Further, CFD simulation prediction of the temperature profile in the bottled beer was validated with ex-
CFD perimental measurements. The study was extended to investigate the effects of different zones' temperatures
Bottled beer on inactivation of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the most common beer spoilage organism. A tunnel pasteurizer
Tunnel pasteurizer with seven zones was selected to study the temperature profile inside the bottled beer and found to be in
Pasteurization units good agreement with the published temperature profiles in different zones. In addition, the effectiveness of
pasteurization was investigated in terms of pasteurization unit (PU) and the resultant PU value (15 to 30 PU)
was adequate for achieving the maximum sterility of beer.
Industrial relevance: In recent years, a rapid development in the application of CFD in food processing operations
has been witnessed. The main need for CFD analysis of pasteurization is to determine the uniform and effective
heat distribution inside the bottled beer and to examine the position of slowest heating zone (SHZ). Relatively
few works have been published related to applications of CFD during beer pasteurization. However, all the stud-
ies were performed with water as a model fluid. So far no work has been published on the CFD simulation during
the pasteurization process in bottled beer by using the thermophysical properties of beer. Hence, the present
study was aimed at investigating the temperature distribution inside the beer bottle during the pasteurization
process and in each zone of the industrial tunnel pasteurizer. This model can be used for the brewery industry
to ensure that the required pasteurization temperature has been reached inside the beer bottle when conveyed
through a tunnel pasteurizer. This is very essential to render a safe product with extended shelf life to the
consumers.
© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Blakemore, & Stannek, 1997). The stability of the final product through
several months can be achieved if common contaminants of beer such
Fermented beverages and foods have a unique place in most socie- as Pediococcus spp., Lactobacillus spp., and wild yeasts like Saccharomyces
ties because of their economical and cultural importance (Legras, spp., Hansenula, Dekkera, Brettanomyces, Candida and Pichia are inactivated
Merdinoglu, Cornuet, & Karst, 2007). Beer is one such most consumed (Priest & Stewart, 2006). These organisms can be inactivated at a time–
fermented beverage in the world and it continues to be a popular temperature combination of around 60 °C for 20 min (Briggs, Boulton,
drink. The shelf-life of beer has become one of the most critical issues Brookes, & Stevens, 2004). Currently, the heat treatment of beer is either
as it is produced and marketed both nationally and internationally performed by flash pasteurization (first pasteurized and then packaged
(Takashio & Shinots, 1998). The shelf-life of beer is mostly determined aseptically) or by tunnel pasteurization (first filled into container (bottles
by its microbiological, colloidal, foam, colour and flavour stabilities or cans) and then pasteurized through tunnel pasteurizers) or batch
(Vanderhaegen, Neven, Verachtert, & Derdelinck, 2006). Heat treatment pasteurization (Buzrul, 2007). Tunnel pasteurization is an important unit
is the widely applied and effective method for extending shelf-life of operation in the brewery packaging line. It deserves most attention in
beverages packed in containers such as glass bottles (Horn, Franke, terms of energy cost due to high steam consumption. A tunnel pasteurizer
comprises a large metal-cased enclosure, divided into a series of zones
⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +91 821 2513910; fax: +91 821 2517233. through which the bottles are passed by a conveying system. The continu-
E-mail address: anandhram@cftri.res.in (C. Anandharamakrishnan). ous pasteurization of the product is achieved during the bottles’ transit

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ifset.2014.03.004
1466-8564/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 E. Bhuvaneswari, C. Anandharamakrishnan / Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies 23 (2014) 156–163 157

through the tunnel, which consists of progressive hotter zones, holding height and 7.3 cm width), containing beer (650 ml) with 7% alcohol
zone and progressively cooler zones (Briggs et al., 2004). content was selected (strong premium beer, United Brewery Pvt. Ltd.)
Most beers are pasteurized after filling to achieve microbiological for the experiment and CFD simulation studies. During experimenta-
stability and to inactivate molds and yeasts that might otherwise alter tion, a small hole was made at the centre of bottle's metal cap for inser-
and deteriorate the product after processing (Reveron, Barreiro, & tion of the calibrated thermocouple. The hole was sealed to ensure that
Sandoval, 2003). Beer spoilage organisms include wild yeasts, the pre- air does not escape and the T-type thermocouple (sensitivity ± 0.5 °C)
dominant of which belongs to the Saccharomyces species (Jespersen & was held at the centre of the bottled beer (9.6 cm from the bottom of the
Jakobsen, 1996). The inactivation of Saccharomyces cerevisiae in beer, bottle). The thermocouple was connected to data acquisition system
based on PU values was studied by Zufall and Wackerbauer (2000) (VR-18, Brainchild Electronics Co., Ltd.) for temperature and time acqui-
and Reveron et al. (2003). Reveron et al. (2003) studied the thermal re- sition. The water bath (pasteurizer) was allowed to reach a set point
sistance of S. cerevisiae and reported the decimal reduction times (DT °C) temperature of 60 ± 0.5 °C. As soon as the water bath attained the
at various temperatures from 47 °C to 60 °C as follows: D47 °C = desired temperature, the whole setup of the beer bottle (in a vertical
3.16 min, D48 °C = 2.65 min, D49 °C = 1.74 min, D50 °C = 0.68 min and position) along with the probe was immersed into the water bath. The
D60 °C = 0.01 min. time–temperature reading was recorded every 30 s till the beer reached
The time–temperature combination for pasteurization of beer has a a stable temperature.
major impact on product quality. Heat treatment affects the original In this experimental setup, heat transfer occurred by natural convec-
characteristics of beer in terms of flavour, colour, bitterness, chill haze tion through water bath followed by conduction from glass bottle to
and protein sensitivity (Buzrul, Alpas, & Bozoglu, 2005). The inactiva- beer and inside the bottle, beer was heated by natural convection.
tion kinetics of beer spoilage micro-organisms forms the basis for PU Similar conditions were used in this present study (boundary conditions
calculation (Zufall & Wackerbauer, 2000). Higher pasteurization tem- described below) for experimental validation. While the beer bottles
perature with shorter holding time favours the beer quality. Hence, were moved through different heating zones in a real case, different
the process temperature needs to be controlled by the water spray on heating zones were moved around the stationary beer bottle under
the beer bottles, during their residence inside the tunnel pasteurizer the simulated conditions. Hence, conditions used in this simulation
(Briggs et al., 2004). study are expected to be similar to that prevalent in industrial scale
In recent years, a rapid development in the application of CFD in food tunnel pasteurization.
processing operations such as drying, sterilization, mixing, refrigeration
and storage has been witnessed (Anandharamakrishnan, 2003; Norton 2.2. CFD simulation
& Sun, 2006; Scott & Richardson, 1997). CFD is a simulation tool, which
uses powerful computers in combination with applied mathematics to Bottle geometry in three dimensions was created using GAMBIT. The
model fluid flow situations and aid in the optimal design of equipments geometrical structure of beer bottle is depicted in Fig. 1. The geometry
and industrial processes (Chhanwal, Anishaparvin, Indrani, Raghavarao, consisted of three volumes, with the first volume representing the
& Anandharamakrishnan, 2010; Kuriakose & Anandharamakrishnan,
2010). The CFD simulations have been widely used to determine
the distribution of temperature and velocity profiles in the thermal pas- Metal Cap
teurization and sterilization of canned food products (Anandpaul,
Anishaparvin, & Anandharamakrishnan, 2011). It can be used to deter-
mine the slowest heating zone (SHZ), which is defined as the location
that receives the minimum heat (i.e. cold spot) during thermal process-
ing and it can be tracked from temperature distribution predictions.
Relatively few works have been published on applications of CFD in Head-space
the pasteurization of beer. Augusto, Pinheiro, and Cristianini (2010)
studied the effect of can orientation on beer pasteurization using CFD.
They reported that, the orientation of beer cans did not result in any im-
provement during beer pasteurization process. A major limitation of
their study was that instead of using beer thermophysical properties,
they used thermophysical properties of water in their simulation.
Dilay, Vargas, Amico, and Ordonez (2006) optimized the pasteurization
tunnel configuration using CFD, with respect to minimum energy con-
sumption. But, this model dealt only with the internal environment of
the tunnel pasteurizer rather than the heat transfer inside the bottle.
Hence, the present study was aimed at developing a CFD model for pas-
teurization of bottled beer, using thermophysical properties of beer to
Beer
investigate the effect of thermal processing time on beer temperature
and location of SHZ. Further, the study was extended to investigate
the degree of inactivation of yeasts in the bottled beer during the tunnel
pasteurization process. In this study, S. cerevisiae was selected as the
target organism and PU value was used as the deciding parameter to Glass
ascertain the influence of different tunnel pasteurization zone tempera-
tures on the inactivation of the aforementioned target organism.

2. Materials and methods

2.1. Experimental methodology

Beer bottles of different shapes and sizes are available in the market.
Due to its extensive usage, a standard size long neck bottle (28.3 cm Fig. 1. Three-dimensional geometry of standard long neck beer bottle.
158 E. Bhuvaneswari, C. Anandharamakrishnan / Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies 23 (2014) 156–163

outer glass bottle with a height of 28.3 cm and 3 mm thickness. The sec- 2.4. Boundary conditions
ond volume represented the beer in the bottom portion of bottle with a
height of 19.4 cm and finally, the third volume represented the head- Thermo-physical properties of beer, headspace, glass bottle and
space with a height of 8.9 cm. The surface and volume mesh were gen- metal cap are listed in Table 1. Viscosity value of beer was adapted
erated and exported to CFD code (Ansys Fluent 12, 2009) for further from Romero et al. (2004). Transient 3D CFD simulation was carried
processing. Tetrahedral grid was used to create a volume mesh for all out. To account for conductive heat transfer through the bottle wall,
the three volumes and the total number of cells was 128370 (bottle — its thickness was measured using a screw gauge and the same (3 mm)
34261, beer — 88219 and headspace — 5890 no. of tetrahedral cells). was used in the simulation. No-slip condition was applied at the bot-
Coarse meshing was done for all 3 volumes, since it is normally used tle walls and beer surface. Beer inside the bottle was assumed to be at
to reduce the computational time without compromising the accuracy. uniform initial temperature of 27 °C considering laminar flow
Mesh (grid) independency study was carried out and it did not show throughout the thermal processing. Beer was coupled with convec-
any significant difference in predictions for the coarse mesh and normal tive heat transfer from headspace air. The hot water temperature
mesh size simulations. In this study, a mesh was created with the total (60 °C) was assumed to remain constant along the heating wall
number of cells 186,136 and exported to Ansys Fluent 12 (2009). Simu- boundaries, during pasteurization. Hence, at the outer surface of
lation prediction does not show much variation. Moreover, it requires bottle wall, T water bath = T = T outer wall = 60 °C.
more computation time and hard-disc space. The finite volume method The published studies on modeling of beer pasteurization approx-
was employed to solve the partial differential forms of the continuity imated the thermal properties of beer to be equivalent to that of
equations using the SIMPLE (semi-implicit pressure-linked equations) water. A comparison graph for the thermal properties of water and
method for pressure–velocity coupling. A first-order implicit upwind beer is presented in Fig. 2. From the figure, it can be inferred that
scheme was used to interpolate the variables on the surface of control the specific heat of beer is significantly different from water while
volume owing to its stability with respect to simulation time step size the thermal conductivity values of beer are comparatively closer to
(set as 1 s) with 5 iteration/time step. The convergence was considered that of water. Hence, beer thermal properties were used in this
to be attained at the root mean square value of less than 10−3 for pres- study.
sure, density and velocity solution variables and 10−5 for temperature. The tunnel pasteurizer is vital equipment in the beer processing line
A dell workstation (T5400), consisting of 2.00 GHz Intel Xenon proces- consisting of different temperature zones. A typical temperature–time
sor with 8 Gb RAM was used for running the simulations and each sim- profile for a seven-zone tunnel pasteurizer is given in Table 2 (Priest &
ulation took approximately 6 h. Stewart, 2006). Each zone is maintained at a different temperature
with specific residence time for the bottles. The first two zones are the
2.3. Governing equations preheat zones where the temperature of beer is gradually raised from
2 °C to around 20 °C to avoid breakage of bottles due to pressure build
The software Ansys Fluent 12 (2009) was used to solve the continu- up. Zone 3 is the superheat zone, where the water spray temperature
ity, momentum and energy equations for the defined geometry and as- is maintained at 65 °C for 14 mins and the temperature of beer is in-
sociated boundary conditions (Ansys Fluent 12, 2009). The generalized creased up to 60 °C. Followed by it, is the holding section, in which
transport equations solved are the temperature of both water spray and beer is maintained at 60 °C
for 6 mins. Pasteurization of beer takes place in this zone 4 (holding
(a) Conservation of mass equation
zone). The following three sections are cooling zones where the tem-
Eq. (1) is the unsteady, three-dimensional, mass conservation or
perature of beer is cooled down to 28 °C. Out of the seven zones the
continuity equation for the simplified case of a fluid flow.
most critical section is the superheat zone, where temperature must
be very accurately controlled, otherwise over pasteurization of beer
∂ρ

! may take place, which results in flavour deterioration.
þ ∇: ρ ν ¼ 0 ð1Þ
∂t Owing to the difficulty in availability of computational resources, in
the present study, the temperature profile inside the bottle was predict-
!
where, ν is velocity vector (m/s), ρ is density (kg/m3). ed by considering the bottles to be in stationary position. Hence, during
(b) Momentum equation CFD simulation, the stationary bottle geometry was moved through
different zones of the tunnel pasteurizer. The exit temperature of the
∂
!

!!
 h

! þ
i bottled beer from the previous zone was set as its inlet temperature in
ρ ν þ ∇: ρ ν ν ¼ −∇p þ ∇: μ ∇ ν þ ð∇!
νÞ þ Sm ð2Þ the following zone. The temperature of the bottle wall (T wall) in each
∂t
zone was set corresponding to the particular zone temperature. The
simulated results were validated with the theoretical data from Priest
where, p is pressure (Pa), μ is dynamic viscosity (kg/m·s).
and Stewart (2006).
Boussinesq approximation was applied for the density in the
body force term (Sm) and can be expressed as follows:
2.5. Pasteurization unit


SM ¼ −ρref β T−T ref g ð3Þ The application of heat during pasteurization causes microbial de-
struction. The final quality of the product depends upon the amount of
heat it has received. The degree of heat treatment is represented by pas-
where, ρref and Tref are the density (kg/m3) and temperature
teurization unit (PU). The number of PU per minute of holding time can
respectively at the boundary wall condition, and g is the gravita-
be calculated using the following equation (Zufall & Wackerbauer,
tional force.
2000):
(c) Energy equation
PU ðT−T ref Þ
∂
 h

!
i
min
¼ 10 z : ð5Þ
ρC p T þ ∇: ν ρC p T ¼ ∇:½k∇T  ð4Þ
∂t
The desired yeast, S. cerevisiae was selected for the studying of
where, k is thermal conductivity, Cp is the specific heat capacity the degree of inactivation. The z-value also called decimal reduction
and T is the temperature. temperature is used to express the temperature dependency of the
 E. Bhuvaneswari, C. Anandharamakrishnan / Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies 23 (2014) 156–163 159

Table 1
Thermophysical properties of beer, headspace, glass and metal used in CFD model.

Value Source

Beer
Specific heat capacity (kJ/kg °C) 2 * 10−5 × T2 − 2 * 10−3 × T + 4.118. Romero, Cabral, Telis, and Gabas (2004)
Thermal conductivity (W/m °C) − 8.116 * 10−6 * T2 + 1.9 * 10−3 × T + 0.54611. Romero et al. (2004)

Headspace
Density (kg/m3) 1.067 * 10−5 × T2 − 4.4992 * 10−3 × T + 1.29008239. Erdogdu and Tutar (2011)
Specific heat capacity (J/kg °C) 1007 Erdogdu and Tutar (2011)
Thermal conductivity (W/m °C) 7.31 * 10−5 × T + 0.02367793 Erdogdu and Tutar (2011)
Viscosity (kg/m s) 4.5 * 10−8 × T + 1.73568 * 10−5. Erdogdu and Tutar (2011)

Glass bottle
Density (kg/m3) 2500 Pinho and Marcelo (2005), Bailey and Elban (2008)
Specific heat capacity (J/kg °C) 750 Pinho and Marcelo (2005), Bailey and Elban (2008)
Thermal conductivity (W/m °C) 1.4 Pinho and Marcelo (2005), Bailey and Elban (2008) (add to reference)

Metal cap
Density (kg/m3) 2702 Pinho and Marcelo (2005)
Specific heat capacity (J/kg °C) 903 Pinho and Marcelo (2005)
Thermal conductivity (W/m °C) 237 Pinho and Marcelo (2005)

inactivation rate. The z-value of S. cerevisiae is 6.94 °C at 60 °C (Zufall & based on the method described by Denys, Pieters, and Dewettinck
Wackerbauer, 2000). Heating temperature of 60 °C was used as refer- (2003) and Radhika, Malhotra, Anishaparvin, and Anandharamakrishnan
ence (Tref). Eq. (5) was solved in the CFD simulation with respect to (2010). The heat transfer coefficient values were selected in the
time and temperature of the process to evaluate the PU for each zone range of 1500 to 500 W/m2 °C (including 1400, 1200, 1000, 800
of the tunnel pasteurizer. and 600 W/m2 °C). Heat transfer coefficient of 600 W/m2 °C was
found to be in good agreement with the experimentally measured
temperature (Fig. 3). It was observed that there was a curvilinear in-
3. Results and discussion
crease in temperature in the preheating zones and beer temperature
reached a steady state of 60 °C after 1200 s of processing time. This
3.1. Experimental validation of the CFD simulation of beer in stationary
rapid increase in temperature may be due to the low viscous nature
bottle
of the product (Anandpaul et al., 2011).
A convective heating mode was selected for CFD simulation (station-
ary beer bottle) and the surface heat transfer coefficient (h) was calcu- 3.2. Temperature profiles of beer bottle during pasteurization in stationary
lated using combined CFD simulation and experimental temperatures, position

Tracking the SHZ is important to assess the effectiveness of the

pasteurization process. Fig. 4(a–g) shows temperature contours of the
beer bottle during pasteurization of beer at time intervals of 30 s, 90 s,
120 s, 360 s, 420 s, 600 s, and 1140 s in the stationary position (water
bath experiment). During the initial stage of heating, SHZ was formed
at the bottom of the bottle, due to changes in viscosity and density.
However, the headspace region was heated faster due to the difference
in thermophysical properties between the headspace air and beer. In
the course of heating, SHZ was observed at the bottom of the bottle.
Fig. 5 shows the CFD simulated temperature profiles extracted at three
points, point 1 (top point 18.4 cm from the bottom of the bottle),
point 2 (centre point 9.6 cm from bottom), and point 3 (bottom point
2 cm from bottom) inside beer bottle during the pasteurization process
at 60 °C. It is evident that point 1 reached a higher temperature, faster
than other points (i.e. the top portion of the bottle heated much faster).
The beer at point 2 (centre) was heated at a faster rate than point 3
(bottom), which justifies the location of SHZ towards the bottom of
the bottle.

Table 2
Typical temperature–time profile for a seven-zone pasteurizer (Priest & Stewart, 2006).

Package temperature (°C)

Zone no. Water temp. (°C) Time (min) In Out

1. Preheat 22 6 2 9
2. Preheat 32 7 9 21
3. Superheat 65 14 21 60
4. Hold 60 6 60 60
5. Cooling 1 40 10 60 43
6. Cooling 2 32 7 43 36
Fig. 2. Comparison of thermal properties of beer and water (a) specific heat (b) thermal
7. Cooling 3 22 6 36 28
conductivity.
160 E. Bhuvaneswari, C. Anandharamakrishnan / Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies 23 (2014) 156–163

Fig. 3. Comparison of experimental measurement (centre point — 6.95 cm from the

bottom) of temperature and CFD simulation results during pasteurization of bottled
beer at 60 °C.

Erdogdu and Tutar (2011) studied the effect of temperature on Fig. 5. CFD simulated temperature profiles (at three point) for beer bottle at pasteur-
headspace in canned water and reported that headspace temperature ization temperature of 60 °C (point 1 — top point 18.4 cm from bottom; point 2 — centre;
point 3 — bottom point 2 cm from bottom).
increased rapidly due to the lower heat capacity and viscosity of the
air. Hence, the insulation effect of headspace cannot be claimed and
moreover, the heating was even faster when compared to the situation at 330 s in the first preheat zone, in which the water spray temperature
where the headspace was assumed to be filled with the product itself. was maintained at 22 °C. The beer temperature was 2 °C during the ini-
Augusto, Pinheiro, Tribst, and Cristianini (2009) studied the SHZ during tial time of preheating and it increased to 15.2 °C at the end of the
the pasteurization of tomato concentrate in glass bottles and found that preheating time (figure is not shown). Fig. 7b shows the temperature
SHZ was located at the bottom of the bottle. It was also observed that contour of bottle at the 420th second of processing time in the second
the funnel shaped geometry of the bottle neck pushed the cold spot to preheating zone (water spray at 32 °C with 15.2 °C and 27.3 °C beer
the bottom of the bottle. Similar results were also obtained by Ghani, temperature upon entering and the exit temperature of simulated bot-
Farid, Chen, and Richards (1999a, 1999b) and the authors showed that tled beer respectively). From Fig. 7a & b, it can be observed that the SHZ
during the thermal processing of liquid foods, the action of natural con- was located at the bottom of the bottle as discussed earlier (see Fig. 5).
vection inside the can, forces the SHZ to migrate towards the bottom Moreover, the top portion of the bottle heated up faster than the bottom
of the can. These observations agreed well with the present study, region due to the natural convection and presence of headspace.
with the results (Fig. 4) clearly showing that the SHZ is present in the Due to natural convection, the temperature gradient created a den-
bottom region of the bottle. Kumar, Bhattacharya, and Blaylock sity difference and the hot beer began to flow upwards. This upward
(1990); Ghani, Farid, and Chen (2002) and Varma and Kannan (2006) movement of the hot liquid also carried the colder fluid by viscous
also reported a similar type of results. drag. The fluid flowing upward was deflected by the top cone surface
of the bottle, after which it started moving in radial direction and then
downwards. Thus, a recirculation phenomenon was observed till uni-
3.3. Temperature profile of the bottled beer in tunnel pasteurizer zones form heating was observed in the fluid (Holdsworth & Simpson, 2007;
Kiziltas, Erdogdu, & Palazoglu, 2010; Kumar et al., 1990). This observa-
An industrial scale tunnel pasteurizer is shown in Fig. 6. Tempera- tion is similar to the results obtained by others on natural convection
ture contours of bottled beer for each zone of the tunnel pasteurizer is heating (Ghani et al., 1999a; Kumar & Bhattacharya, 1991). Kumar
given in Figs. 7(a–m). Fig. 7a shows the temperature contour of bottle et al. (1990) reported that the slowest heating point was located at

Temperature (°C) a) 30s b) 90s c) 120s d) 360s e) 420s f) 600s g) 1140s

Fig. 4. Temperature contours (a–g) of bottled beer during the pasteurization (60 °C) process at different time intervals.
 E. Bhuvaneswari, C. Anandharamakrishnan / Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies 23 (2014) 156–163 161

Fig. 6. Schematic diagram of tunnel pasteurizer.

the geometric centre of the can, during the conduction heating of a The second preheat zone at processing time of 510 s (Fig. 7c) and
canned thick viscous liquid food from all sides (top, bottom and side- super heat zone at 1140 s (with water spray temperature, 65 °C and
wall). In the case of pure convection heating of liquids, the SHZ was inlet and exit temperature of beer respectively at 27.3 °C and 62.3 °C)
located at about 10–15% of the can height (Pflug, 1987). (see Fig. 7f) showed that SHZ was located at the bottom of the bottle.

Temperature (°C) Zone one (preheat 1) Zone two (preheat 2) Zone three (super heat)

Water spray Water spray temperature (32°C) Water spray temperature ( 65°C)
temperature ( 22 °C)

a) 330s b) 420s c) 510s d) 810s e) 960s f) 1140s g) 1320s

Temperature Zone four ( holding) Zone five ( cooling 1) Zone six ( cooling 2) Zone seven ( cooling 3)
scale (° C)
Water spray Water spray Water spray Water spray
temperature (60°C) temperature (40°C) temperature (32°C) temperature (22°C)

h) 1980s i) 2010s j) 2220s k) 2700s l) 3300 m) 3360s

Fig. 7. Temperature profiles (a–m) of bottled beer in different zones of tunnel pasteurizer at different time intervals.
162 E. Bhuvaneswari, C. Anandharamakrishnan / Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies 23 (2014) 156–163

This correlated well with Fig. 5 (constant heating at 60 °C), where, SHZ be extended to study the different zones of a tunnel pasteurizer with
was found at the bottle bottom due to convective heating and funnel more bottles.
shaped neck of the bottle. Fig. 7k shows that the temperature contour
of bottle in the second cooling zone at 2700 s was maintained at
3.4. Pasteurization unit
32 °C, indicating that the bottom portion of the bottle cooled slowly
when compared to the top portion. Hence, the rate of heat transfer
The degree of inactivation of the target microorganism S. cerevisiae
was low in the bottom region when compared to other portions of the
(yeast) was estimated using Eq. (5) integrated into CFD simulation, for
bottle during both heating and cooling processes. Moreover, rapid
all the seven zones of the tunnel pasteurizer. The PU/min values were
increase in temperature increased the pressure inside the bottle which
calculated for every minute of the thermal process. The values were
in turn was dependent on the headspace of the bottle. Bottles with
extracted at three points (point 1, 2 & 3) inside the beer bottle during
small headspace region experienced a steep rise in pressure, which
the pasteurization process for all seven zones. In Fig. 9, there exists a
resulted in bursting of bottles. Hence, a low temperature, long time
steep increase in PU values (around 2) in the superheat zone, where
pasteurization profile is usually adapted for tunnel pasteurization
the zone temperature was maintained at 65 °C. A similar trend was
process (Priest & Stewart, 2006).
shown by Hough, Briggs, and Stevens (1971) in their experimental mea-
Fig. 8 compares the temperature profile of bottled beer in each zone
surement of PU during beer pasteurization in a tunnel pasteurizer. Fig. 9
of the tunnel pasteurizer with the theoretical data. Theoretical data was
also showed that all the three points (points 1, 2 & 3) followed the sim-
obtained from Priest and Stewart (2006) and was measured using tem-
ilar trend of inactivation with slight variations due to natural convec-
perature probe in a beer bottle at each zone of the pasteurizer. It can be
tion. The PU value for all 7 zones was calculated (using Eq. (5)), which
seen from Fig. 8 that, there was a gradual increase of temperature of
resulted in 19.89, 15.71 and 13.96 (only PU) for points 1, 2 and 3 respec-
beer in zone 2 (second preheat at 32 °C) due to gradual increase in tun-
tively. Further, it could also be observed that PU value almost followed
nel zone temperature (10 °C increase). A curvilinear increase in temper-
the temperature predictions (see Fig. 8), where maximum temperature
ature at zone 3 (superheat at 65 °C) was observed and this may be due
(62.3 °C) was attained at 1620 s. Similarly, higher PU value was predict-
to the sudden increase in zone temperature from 32 °C to 65 °C. Further,
ed at 1620 s (Fig. 9). Beer pasteurization with 15–30 PU is considered to
a very gradual decrease in temperature with respect to tunnel zone
be a safe practice Briggs et al. (2004). Hence, this study indicated that
temperature was observed in cooling zones (40 °C, 32 °C and 22 °C).
the obtained PU value of 17 is sufficient to achieve the required
The exit temperature of beer bottle at the end of each of the 7 zones
inactivation.
were 15.2 °C, 27.3 °C, 62.3 °C, 60.8 °C, 43.2 °C, 35.1 °C and 26.5 °C,
respectively. These predictions are in reasonable agreement with the
published data (Table 2). 4. Conclusion
However, some deviation in zones 1 and 2 was observed. During the
initial period of heating (zone 1 and zone 2), a slight temperature differ- CFD model for thermal pasteurization of bottled beer was developed
ence in beer, near bottle wall and core region was observed due to buoy- and validated with the experimental measurements of temperature.
ancy force. Later, the temperature difference was reduced due to higher This study indicated that, using the actual thermophysical properties
heat transfer promoted by the natural convection (Amoura, Zeraibi, of beer was more appropriate than approximating the values with
Smati, & Gareche, 2006). In the simulation, buoyancy effect may pro- that of water. The results of this work signified that, using the appropri-
duce small-scale instabilities. The buoyancy-produced structures ate thermophysical values lead to close correlation between the simula-
might have interacted directly with the existing local turbulence with tion predictions and experimental measurements. It could also be
the strong coupling where laminar modeling could not predict this inferred from the study that, the SHZ was located towards the bottom
well. This could be the reason because of which an accurate prediction of the bottle due to natural convection effect and the location was
of the temperature gradient in the vertical direction was not possible dependent on the processing time. Further, this study was extended
(Erdogdu & Tutar, 2011). However, beer temperature predictions of re- to investigate the temperature profile inside the bottle for an industrial
maining zones from 3 to 7 were in good agreement with theoretical
data obtained by Priest and Stewart (2006). Therefore, the model can

Fig. 9. Pasteurization unit (PU) calculated (at three points) inside the bottled beer for
Fig. 8. Comparison of CFD simulation results with theoretical data for different zones of seven zone tunnel pasteurizer (point 1 — top point 18.4 cm from bottom; point 2 — centre;
tunnel pasteurizer. point 3 — bottom point 2 cm from bottom).
 E. Bhuvaneswari, C. Anandharamakrishnan / Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies 23 (2014) 156–163 163

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dated with the available theoretical data. The time–temperature combi- tion of bacteria in a canned liquid food during sterilization using computational fluid
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Acknowledgement
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