Background

The availability and movement of water inside the food materials play essential roles for food stability by affecting their physical and chemical properties, and microbiological activity. Understanding the moisture sorption behavior is a necessary step to control food properties. Food processing unit operations like drying and cooking influence the behavior of starch since such systems trigger swelling or shrinkage as a result of moisture sorption or desorption mechanisms. Also, these processes alter many aspects of starch-containing foods such as acceptability, nutritional value, quality, and shelf-life.

Scope and approach

Therefore, understanding the water transport in starchy foods and the changes occurring in functional properties of starch has a great importance to describe and model their sorption and drying behavior. First, the primary mechanisms occurring during water transport such as moisture sorption, swelling, gelatinization, and glass transition are discussed using experimental results presented in the literature. Additionally, the hybrid mixture theory (HMT) and its potential for predicting transport mechanisms in starchy foods is discussed.

Key findings and conclusions

In addition to experimental considerations, the mathematical modeling provides complementary information to predict the heat and fluid transfer. The hybrid mixture theory based multiscale models are able to describe the physico-chemical changes and general transport mechanisms occurring within a porous food matrix. This theory can also be used to predict the quality changes in food products during processing.

中文翻译：

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含淀粉食品中的水运输：实验和数学方面

背景

食品原料中水的可利用性和流动性通过影响食品的理化特性和微生物活性，对食品的稳定性起着至关重要的作用。了解水分吸收行为是控制食品特性的必要步骤。食品加工单元的操作（例如干燥和蒸煮）会影响淀粉的行为，因为这样的系统由于吸湿或解吸机制而触发溶胀或收缩。同样，这些过程改变了含淀粉食品的许多方面，例如可接受性，营养价值，质量和保质期。

范围和方法

因此，了解淀粉类食品中的水分传输和淀粉功能特性中的变化对于描述和模拟其吸附和干燥行为非常重要。首先，利用文献中提供的实验结果讨论了水传输过程中发生的主要机理，例如水分吸收，溶胀，糊化和玻璃化转变。此外，还讨论了混合混合物理论（HMT）及其在淀粉类食品中预测转运机制的潜力。

主要发现和结论

除了实验考虑之外，数学模型还提供了补充信息来预测热量和流体的传递。基于混合混合物理论的多尺度模型能够描述发生在多孔食品基质中的物理化学变化和一般运输机制。该理论还可用于预测加工过程中食品的质量变化。