Basic Study on the Heat Transfer During Rapid Freezing of Syobean Seed by Liquid Nitrogen

Direct freezing tests of soybean seed by liquid nitrogen were carried out at various moisture contents and the following important conclusions were drawn from the results of temperature measurements of soybean seed and photographs of bubbles generated on its surface : 1) Assuming that the temperature gradient in a soybean seed is negligible because of its small seed size and the freezing ratio is followed the Heiss's formula, and a differential equation based on the heat energy balance was introduced . The equation was easily solved by the Runge-Kutta-Gill method and the predicted values of the temperature were in good agreement with the observed data. 2) The photographs of bubble generation during freezing showed the boiling mode was nucleate, and then the most suitable formula on the nucleate boiling heat transfer was introduced from many formulate proposed up to now by fitting the calculated values based on the formula to the observed data. The formula used for the predict on of the seed temperature was as follows: $\frac{{\partial}T_s}{\partial\theta}\;=\;-\frac{{\alpha}(T_s\;-\;T_L)^{3.3}}{W(C_s\;-\;\frac{{\delta}m(CT_s\;+\;{\sigma})}{T_s^2})}$ where C = difference of the specific heat between pure ice and water m=moisture content of soybean seed $T_s$ = seed temperature $T_L$ = Temperature of liquid nitrogen W = mass of soybean seed $\alpha$ = proportional constant $\delta$ = constant depends on variety or the type of seed $\theta$ = time $\sigma$ = latent heat of melting of pure ice This study will give important information in the hydro-freezing technique by liquid nitrogen, available as a new technique of processing agricultural products in the near future.