A Transient Analysis of Freeze-drying
Freeze-drying, or lyophilization, is a process for drying heat-sensitive substances such as foods, blood plasma, and antibiotics. The wet substance is frozen and then through sublimation ice or some other frozen solvent is removed in the presence of a high vacuum.This example models the process ice sublimation in a vial under vacuum-chamber conditions, a test case for many freeze-drying setups.
The model uses the arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) method to compute the coupled heat and mass balances on a moving mesh attached to the advancing vapor-ice interface.
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Slice plot of the temperature, the arrows indicate the direction of the heat flux. |
Engineering Fields
- Heating, Cooling & Phase Transfer in the Process Industry
- Heating in Bioengineering & Medical Technology
- Mass Transfer
- Energy Transfer
Application Areas
- Teaching
- Heat Transfer
- Chemical Engineering
- Biomedical Engineering