Radio frequency (RF) heating has great potential for achieving rapid and volumetric heating in foods, providing safe and high-quality food products due to deep penetration depth, moisture self-balance effects, and leaving no chemical residues. However, the nonuniform heating problem (usually resulting in hot and cold spots in the heated product) needs to be resolved. The inhomogeneous temperature distribution not only affects the quality of the food but also raises the issue of food safety when the microorganisms or insects may not be controlled in the cold spots. The mathematical modeling for RF heating processes has been extensively studied in a wide variety of agricultural products recently. This paper presents a comprehensive review of recent progresses in computer simulation for RF heating uniformity improvement and the offered solutions to reduce the heating nonuniformity. It provides a brief introduction on the basic principle of RF heating technology, analyzes the applications of numerical simulation, and discusses the factors influencing the RF heating uniformity and the possible methods to improve heating uniformity. Mathematical modeling improves the understanding of RF heating of food and is essential to optimize the RF treatment protocol for pasteurization and disinfestation applications. Recommendations for future research have been proposed to further improve the accuracy of numerical models, by covering both heat and mass transfers in the model, validating these models with sample movement and mixing, and identifying the important model parameters by sensitivity analysis.

中文翻译：

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改善食品射频（RF）加热均匀性的计算机模拟：综述

射频（RF）加热具有深远的渗透深度，水分自平衡效应，并且不会留下任何化学残留物，具有在食品中实现快速定量加热的巨大潜力，可提供安全，优质的食品。但是，不均匀的加热问题（通常在加热的产品中导致热点和冷点）需要解决。温度分布不均匀不仅影响食品质量，而且当在寒冷地区可能无法控制微生物或昆虫时，还会引发食品安全问题。最近，在多种农产品中，对RF加热过程的数学模型进行了广泛的研究。本文全面回顾了计算机模拟中用于改善RF加热均匀性的最新进展，并提供了减少加热不均匀性的解决方案。它简要介绍了射频加热技术的基本原理，分析了数值模拟的应用，并讨论了影响射频加热均匀性的因素以及提高加热均匀性的可能方法。数学建模可以增进对食品射频加热的理解，对于优化用于巴氏灭菌和除虫应用的射频处理方案至关重要。通过覆盖模型中的传热和传质，并通过样品移动和混合来验证这些模型，提出了进一步研究的建议，以进一步提高数值模型的准确性。