CFD Simulation and Experimental Validation of Thermal and Quality Dynamics in Fried Gulabjamun

Abstract

Gulabjamun is a traditional Indian dairy product and is a sweet delicacy which is popular across the South Asian countries. However, its production is mostly done at small scale by unorganized dairies due to the lack of process equipment available for its production. Modelling and simulation are considered useful tool for designing and optimizing the process parameters for equipment design. Thus, present work focuses on simulation of temperature distribution across the gulabjamun ball during frying at different temperatures using ANSYS R15.0 software. Validation of the simulated results was done by conducting the frying and the results given by simulation and actual experiment were comparable. The effect of frying temperature and time on the thermal conductivity, specific heat and change in weight and volume were measured. The hardness value of fried gulabjamun varied from 2156 to 2975 g force increasing temperature from 120 ^°C to 140 ^°C as analysed using texture profile analyser. Based on the different quality parameters, temperature time combination of 130 for 20 min was selected as optimum combination for frying of gulabjamun balls.