Emerging Technologies for Food Processing, 2nd Edition

20.2. Dielectric Properties of Foods

Dielectric heating provides volumetric heating, which means that heat is generated inside the material via absorption of electromagnetic energy from the applied field. The intensity and frequency of the field as well as dielectric properties of the material determine the degree of volumetric power absorption and the rate of heat generation (Shivhare et al., 2010). Dielectric properties of agricultural materials and foods provide information about their behavior during electromagnetic heating (Venkatesh and Raghavan, 2004). These properties of materials need to be known in order to understand the microwave heating mechanism, and hence for simulating, modeling, and applying microwave heating successfully, and ...