Journal of Food Engineering 180 (2016) 87e100

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Journal of Food Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jfoodeng

Thawing in a microwave cavity: Comprehensive understanding of

inverter and cycled heating
Fangyuan Chen a, b, Alexander D. Warning b, Ashim K. Datta b, *, Xing Chen a
a
School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610065, China
b
Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: A comprehensive understanding of the electromagnetics and thermal aspects of the thawing of frozen
Received 22 October 2015 foods in a domestic microwave oven cavity was developed through a model that two-way couples
Received in revised form Maxwell's equations with the heat conduction equation with continuous variation of dielectric and
11 February 2016
thermal properties with temperature. Tylose, a material with properties similar to those of lean beef, was
Accepted 13 February 2016
Available online 20 February 2016
used to experimentally validate the model. Temperatures were measured using fiber optic and infrared
sensors. Various salt contents that were used in formulating the tylose represented important variations
in dielectric properties, latent heat release, and initial freezing point. Spatial and time variations of all
Keywords:
Electromagnetics
important parameters are used to explain the results. As material thaws, total energy absorption de-
Heat transfer creases, a novel result that is explained by reference to continuous changes in dielectric properties. Shifts
Non-uniformity in the resonant frequency of the cavity as load size changes explain the changes in total energy ab-
Inverter heating sorption with size. Inverter heating, a newer technology that claims superiority over ordinary cycled
Power absorption heating, produced only minimal differences in temperature uniformity or color.
© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction newer approach, inverter heating, uses continuous power at the

As ubiquitous as microwave thawing is today, it is a physically
complex and interesting process that has major implications in
everyday food preparation, among other applications. The advan-
tages of microwave thawing include faster heating and reduced
energy consumption (Watanabe et al., 2010). However, the elec-
tromagnetics of a microwave oven renders the spatial energy
deposition highly non-uniform. As heating continues and temper-
ature rises, the thermal and, more importantly, dielectric properties
change with temperature. In particular, as the material thaws, the
change in dielectric properties is massive and this changes the
electromagnetic field inside the oven as well as the spatial energy
absorption; in other words, the electromagnetics and heat transfer
are strongly two-way coupled. The typical household microwave
oven performs cycled heating whereby the microwaves are on at
full power a fraction of the time over one cycle (equal to the fraction
of the desired maximum power delivered by the oven) followed by
zero power when the microwaves turn off. On the other hand, a
* Corresponding author. Department of Biological and Environmental Engineer-
ing, Cornell University, 208 Riley-Robb, Ithaca, NY, 14853-5701, USA.
E-mail address: akd1@cornell.edu (A.K. Datta).
desired level, which purportedly improves the uniformity and
heating efficiency (Panasonic, 2015). The size of the object being
heated (the load) also affects the heating process in a complex
manner by changing the amount of energy absorbed. Even small
changes in composition, such as in the salt content, can change the
process significantly. The salt concentration combined with the
microwave frequency significantly affects the dielectric properties
and penetration depth, thus thawing time. The dielectric loss of
salted food increases with increasing salt concentration and
decreasing microwave frequency (Llave et al., 2016). Conversely, the
penetration depth increases with decreasing salt concentration
(Llave et al., 2016). The non-uniformities involved in heating frozen
foods in a microwave oven manifest to the user in terms of quality
and microbiological safety (Chandrasekaran et al., 2013). Quality
can deteriorate significantly in regions where time-temperature
history leads to greater kinetic changes and pathogens can sur-
vive in locations where the time-temperature history leads to the
least kinetic change (Rao et al., 2014). Because of the large spatial
temperature variation during microwave heating, it is imperative to
understand when microwave heating is satisfactory in terms of
safety and quality (i.e., small sized food products) and when other
methods of thawing are more efficient (e.g., radio frequency

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2016.02.007
0260-8774/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
88 F. Chen et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 180 (2016) 87e100
heating for large food sizes (Uyar et al., 2015)) (Taher and Farid,
2001a). The impetus for the present study is that we can greatly
facilitate the design and optimization of newer microwave and
combination microwave ovens and the design of microwaveable
products to achieve improved quality and safety through improved
mechanistic understanding of microwave heating.
1.1. Challenges in mathematical modeling of microwave thawing
Realistic modeling of microwave thawing requires a complete
solution of 3D electromagnetics in a cavity that is coupled with heat
transferdthis is already a computationally challenging problem.
The phase change in a material such as food in which the water
contains many dissolved solutes requires a formulation whereby
melting is distributed in space (as opposed to a thawing front) as it
is continuously changing with temperature. With phase change,
the dielectric properties change and this continuous change in
dielectric properties needs to be predicted reasonably well and
included in the model. The more the dielectric properties vary with
temperature, the more intimately coupled are the electromagnetics
and the thermal problems.This translates into taking smaller time
steps and computing more often, again increasing computing
resource requirements.
1.2. Previous work on modeling of microwave thawing
Previous work on microwave thawing can be broadly divided
into two groups based on how the electromagnetics were
modeled: 1) using plane waves with or without an exponential
decay solution of the electromagnetic field; and 2) using micro-
wave cavity solutions. Studies in the first group include all the early
work before dramatic improvements in both computer hardware
and software were made, as is the case today. These studies used
models with tylose cubes (Chamchong and Datta, 1999b,c), ice and
water slabs (Basak, 2003), tylose cylinders (Basak and Ayappa,
2002), and layered frozen and unfrozen materials in an ice-water
system (Phadungsak et al., 2002; Rattanadecho, 2004). Some of
the solutions generated by these earlier models that are idealized
are analytical but most are numerical. Using an exponentially
decaying function combined with 3D heat transfer for cavity
heating make it possible to capture the effects of power level and
cycling as well as the geometry and dielectric properties, but
without the full electromagnetic solution for which the required
computing resources were difficult to obtain at that time. Such a
solution cannot capture the non-uniformity of the electric field or
other electromagnetic details (Taher and Farid, 2001b). It is fair to
say that while results obtained this way provide some mechanistic
understanding of microwave heating, they are far from providing a
full understanding of true cavity heating.
In the second group are the relatively more recent models in
which cavity solutions are coupled with heat transfer and changing
dielectric properties are included. With advances in computing
power, the ability to couple multiphysics simulations where Max-
well's equations are solved in the microwave cavity and food are
now readily available. The challenge in computing power was due
to the fact that an accurate solution requires approximately six
elements per wavelength (Jin, 2002) leading many thousands or
millions of elements thus previously requiring a super computer
which can now be solved on a desktop computer. Some studies
(Tilford et al., 2007; Watanabe et al., 2010; Chen et al., 2015) focus
on computational challenges and the steps taken to address these
but with little attention to developing a detailed mechanistic un-
derstanding of the thawing process. For example, Chen et al. (2015)
demonstrated that decoupling the heat transfer and electromag-
netics simulation did not considerably affect the predicted
temperatures during thawing of mashed potatoes. Pitchai et al.
(2016) used a fully coupled heat transfer and electromagnetics
simulation to demonstrate the importance of the frequency range
in domestic microwave ovens. Their results showed how incorpo-
rating a 50 MHz standard deviation into the microwave frequency
improve predictive capabilities of the simulation versus the stan-
dard assumption of a constant 2.45 GHz frequency (Pitchai et al.,
2016). In another such study (Tilford et al., 2007), a two-way
coupled mechanistic model was developed for thawing of frozen
cheese sauce but focused on model validation and computational
implementation versus understanding the mechanisms involved in
thawing.
1.3. Inverter heating
Inverter heating (Bansal et al., 2011) is a relatively newer mode
of heating that employs a constant power level in thawing, as
opposed to the more typical cycled power heating. In cycled power
heating, the magnetron delivers 100% of the power followed by no
power (Fig. 1). Although cycled heating and inverter heating should
deliver the same time-averaged power in the time scale of one
cycle, there can be a significant difference in temperature and, over
time, the accumulated effects (color, texture change or any other
reaction) can be different. The physics of inverter heating is not
known. Thus, although there is a significant body of literature on
cycled power heating (Taher and Farid, 2001b), precise conclusions
applying to constant power level inverter heating from studies on
cycled power heating cannot be drawn.
1.4. The purpose of this study
The purpose of this study was to develop a comprehensive
mechanistic understanding of microwave thawing in a cavity that
includes all the fundamental physics: 1) the complete electro-
magnetics, 2) the frozen fraction that changes continuously with
temperature, 3) the dielectric and thermal properties that contin-
uously change with the frozen fraction, and 4) the two-way coupled
electromagnetics and heat transfer. This mechanistic understand-
ing will be presented in terms of transient temperatures and
temperature non-uniformity within the material and will focus on
issues that are unanswered today in the citations mentioned in the
previous paragraph: 1) How does the total power absorption
change as the material thaws? 2) How does cyclic power (as is
common) differ from newer inverter heating? 3) What is the effect
of product size on energy absorption? 4) What is the effect of salt
content in a material?
1.5. Objectives and overview
The objectives of this study are to: 1) develop and experimen-
tally validate a comprehensive mathematical model for microwave
heating of a frozen food analog (a tylose cube), 2) compute the
change in power absorption in the food analog as the dielectric
properties change continuously during heating, 3) compare
inverter heating with traditional cycled heating, and 4) determine
the effects of size and changes in properties (as the salt content
changes) on the heating process. Two microwave heating cycles
were tested for temperature, power absorption, and color: cyclic
and inverter output microwave. With inverter microwave heating,
constant power is applied. With cyclic microwave heating, constant
power is applied temporarily, followed by no power from the
magnetron. Additionally, we tested the effects of salt concentration
and object size. Salt concentration affects electrical permittivity
while size affects wave absorption of the tylose.
 F. Chen et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 180 (2016) 87e100 89

Fig. 1. Power output from cyclic oven and inverter oven, respectively.

2. Model formulation

The properties for Maxwell's equations are two-way coupled

with the properties of the heat transfer equation for thawing a
tylose block in a microwave oven. The color change is modeled with
first-order degradation kinetics to quantify the amount of heating.

2.1. Microwave oven and thawed material

The microwave oven (Fig. 2) in this research is a model

JES738WJ02 (General Electric). It is a domestic microwave oven
operating at a 2.45 GHz frequency at a rated power of 700W. Fig. 2a
shows the geometry model in COMSOL Multiphysics 4.4. Fig. 2b
shows an inside view of the prototype of the oven. As shown in
Fig. 2b, the magnetron is located at the right upper side of the
cavity, where the light is on in the figure. All interior surface di-
mensions were measured and replicated in the COMSOL model. The
material being thawed is a frozen tylose gel cube (L3 mm3) located
in the center bottom of the oven cavity, with L ranging from 10 to
60 mm.

2.2. Governing equations

To model microwave heating, Maxwell's equations are solved to

obtain the electric field. The volumetric heat source term is calcu-
lated from the electric field and used with the conduction equation.
As the temperature changes, the temperature-dependent electrical
and thermal properties change, making the problem two-way
coupled.

2.3. Electromagnetics

The electromagnetic field is calculated by the frequency domain

Maxwell's equation:



⃗ js ⃗
V
m1
r V
E  k2
0 ε r  E¼0 (1)
u
Fig. 2. a) Geometry input in COMSOL Multiphysics (detailed dimensions are not
where m is the permeability, εr is the relative permittivity, k0 is the included for clarity, but included in COMSOL). b) Geometry of oven with tylose at the
center, as input in the computational software.
wave number and s is the electrical conductivity of the material (air
and space). The relative permittivity is related to the real ε' and
imaginary ε'' permittivity by the vacuum permittivity ε0.
 00
.
εr ¼ ε0  jε ε0 (2) 1 00
Q¼ uε ε E⃗2 (3)
2 0
The thermal energy absorbed from the cube, Q, is calculated
from the electromagnetic field by Eq. (3): where u is the microwave frequency of 2.45 GHz.
90 F. Chen et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 180 (2016) 87e100

2.4. Heat transfer   . 

The transport of energy in the tylose cube is modeled with
conduction and apparent specific heat is used to account for the
latent heat of thawing. Microwave heating is included in the power
absorption.
xi ¼ ðxw  xb Þ 1  Tfi  273:15 ðT  273:15Þ (9)
The apparent specific heat cp,eff, based on the mass fractions, is
used to model the ice melting over a temperature range, starting at
the initial freezing point:

vT   dxu
reff cp;eff ¼ V$ keff VT þ Q  le I_ (4) cp;eff ¼ xsalt cp;salt þ xs cp;s þ xu cp;u þ xi cp;i þ lm (10)
vt dT
 Fig. 3c shows that the thermal conductivity changes very little
0 T < 100 +C
le I_ ¼ (5) above the freezing point but it changes dramatically below. Fig. 3d
Q T  100 +C shows that the salt concentration has little influence on specific
Here le is the latent heat of evaporation and I_ is the rate of water heat capacity.
evaporation, which is assumed to be equal to the microwave
heating term (Chamchong and Datta, 1999b; Zeng and Faghri, 2.7. Initial and boundary conditions and other input parameters
1994).
The initial temperature of the frozen tylose cube was 253.15 K
and the initial electric field was 0 V/m. The initial color value was
2.5. Color normalized to 100 such that lower values indicate product
darkening.
To validate ongoing claims about the role of invertor heating in The boundary conditions everywhere in the microwave were
producing color in cooked food, color development during cooking perfect electrical conductors. There were 700 W and 2.45 GHz
(Holdsworth and Simpson, 2007) was modeled. For this work, the applied at the magnetron boundary. For heat transfer, tylose cubes
color development, C, was modeled as: were modeled. The surface of the tylose cubes was modeled with a

 natural convection boundary condition with a convective heat
dC Ea transfer coefficient of 20 W/m2 K (Datta, 2007) and air temperature
¼ gexp C (6)
dt RT T0 ¼ 20 C.
Additional input parameters used in the simulation are sum-
where g is the reaction constant, R is the gas constant, and Ea is the marized in Table 1.
activation energy.
3. Numerical implementation
2.6. Material properties
Fig. 4 shows the flow chart of the entire computational process.
A tylose gel cube at varying salt concentrations (2%, 3% and 4%) Tetrahedron meshes were used in COMSOL Multiphysics 4.4 such
was used in the experiments. Fig. 3 shows the dielectric and ther- that there were at least 6 elements per wavelength. To check mesh
mal properties of the tylose gel at these salt concentrations and at convergence, the average temperature and electric field in the
2.45 GHz (Chamchong and Datta, 1999a). The fraction of unfrozen tylose cube were plotted with time (not shown) and did not change.
water and the density of tylose was measured experimentally The frequency domain electromagnetic waves module and heat
(Fig. 3a and b), and dielectric properties were used based on these transfer in the solid module were used to solve Maxwell's equation
data, as shown in Fig. 3e and f. The dielectric constant and loss (Eq. (1)) and the heat transfer equation (Eq. (4)) respectively. The
increase dramatically with the temperature below 0  C, but then domain ordinary differential equation was used to solve for color
the dielectric constant decreases while the dielectric loss increases (Eq. (6)). The computation time step was set to 0.1 s. The simula-
above the freezing point. tions were run on an Intel Xeon 32 core CPU, 2.8 GHz, and 256 GB
The initial freezing point is determined by the equation (Gulati memory. Computation time ranged from one to four days
and Datta, 2013) depending on the size of the tylose cube.
 
1 1 R ðxw  xb Þ=Mw 4. Experimental methods
¼  ln (7)
Tfi Tf 0 lm Mw ðxu  xb Þ=Mw þ xs =Ms
The microwave oven used in the experiments operates with
where Tf0 is the freezing temperature of pure water, lm is the latent cyclical power outputs (Fig. 1). For cyclical heating, the period was
heat of melting, xw is the total water weight of material before 22 s with 11 s on and 11 s off. To measure the temperature of the
freezing, xu is the water in the unfrozen part below the initial cube, a hole (20 mm in diameter) was drilled in the top of the
freezing point, xb (¼0.4xs, where xs is the solid mass fraction) is microwave so that the top face would be visible to an infrared
bound water, Mw is the molecular weight of water, and Ms is the camera. The hole has a negligible effect on heating as radiation does
molecular weight of tylose. For most foods, the freezing point is not escape through it because it can be treated as a circular wave
between 4  C and 0  C (Gulati and Datta, 2013). For pure tylose guide connected to an oven cavity. Although considerable wave
gel, the freezing temperature is 0.62 ± 0.05  C. Higher salt content transmission mode exists in the circular cavity, the lowest wave
in materials generally leads to a lower initial freezing temperature mode is the dominant one. The critical frequency is then
(James et al., 2005).
kc
A mass-averaged equation is used to evaluate the thermal uc ¼ pffiffiffiffiffi (11)
2p mε
conductivity:

keff ¼ xw kw þ xi ki þ xs ks (8) where kc is the cutoff wavenumber, which is determined by the

waveguide's lowest wave mode. For a circular waveguide,
Here the mass fraction of ice, xi, is given by: kc ¼ 92.02 (Pozar, 2009), and thus its cutoff frequency is
 F. Chen et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 180 (2016) 87e100 91

Fig. 3. Thermal and electrical properties at various salt concentrations with temperature: a) density, b) unfrozen water fraction, c) thermal conductivity, d) apparent specific heat
capacity, e) dielectric constant, f) dielectric loss.

uc ¼ 4.39 GHz. So in theory, for the 2.45 GHz EM wave, there is no
leakage. Negligible EM power was measured near the hole.
The tylose gel was made of 23% tylose powder (MH1000,
Hoechst Celanese Corp, North Carolina, USA), 77% pure water, and
varying amounts of table salt. The point temperatures in the tylose
gel cube were recorded at six locations with an optical fiber probe
(temperature range 40 C to 250 C, FISO Company, Quebec,
Canada) (Fig. 5) and the surface temperature was measured with an
infrared camera (FLIR, Wilsonville, OR). The six fiber optic sensors
were inserted into the tylose cube before freezing at 20 C for
24 h. Figure 5c shows the fiber optic temperature probe; the sensor
area C is about 6.5 mm long and with a 1 mm diameter. So the
tested point temperature actually is a small volume-average tem-
perature, which is different from the point temperature in the
model. Therefore, to compare the tested temperature with the
temperature in the model, the average temperature of a cylindrical
region of 1 mm diameter and 6.5 mm long was used.
92 F. Chen et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 180 (2016) 87e100

Table 1
Input parameters.

Parameter Symbol Value Units Source

Electromagnetic properties
Vacuum permeability m0 1.2566
106 V s A1 m1 (Pozar, 2009)
Relative permeability of air mr,a 1 (Pozar, 2009)
Relative permeability of tylose mr,t 1 (Chamchong and Datta, 1999a)
Vacuum permittivity ε0 8.854
1012 F m1 (Pozar, 2009)
Relative permittivity of air εr,a 1 (Pozar, 2009)
Relative permittivity of tylose εr,t Eq. (2) (Pozar, 2009)
Microwave frequency u0 2.45 GHz
Electrical conductivity s ∞ S m1 (Pozar, 2009)
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
Wave number k0 u mε0 m1 (Pozar, 2009)
Permittivity real ε' Fig. 3e F m1 (Pozar, 2009)
Permittivity imaginary ε'' Fig. 3f F m1 (Pozar, 2009)
Cutoff frequency wc 4.39 GHz (Pozar, 2009)
Cutoff wavenumber kc 92.02 (Pozar, 2009)
Heat transfer properties
Density r 798 kg m3 Measured
Specific heat cp,eff Eq. 10 J kg1 K1 Calculated
Specific heat, water cp,u 4178 J kg1 K1 (Halder et al., 2011)
Specific heat, ice cp,i 2062 J kg1 K1 (Halder et al., 2011)
specific heat, salt cp,salt 630 J kg1 K1 (Sirdeshmukh et al., 2001)
Specific heat, tylose cp,s 1400 J kg1 K1 (Stephen and Phillips, 2014)
Thermal conductivity keff Eq. (8) W m1 K1 Calculated
Thermal conductivity, water ku 0.57 W m1 K1 (Halder et al., 2011)
Thermal conductivity, ice ki 2.22 W m1 K1 (Halder et al., 2011)
Thermal conductivity, salt ksalt 2.03 W m1 K1 (Sirdeshmukh et al., 2001)
Thermal conductivity, tylose ks 0.26 W m1 K1 (Stephen and Phillips, 2014)
Constants
Boltzmann kB 1.3806
1023 J K1 (Pozar, 2009)
Rate constant g 2.07
105 s1 (Ateba and Mittal, 1994)
Activation energy Ea 16.92
103 kJ mol1 (Ateba and Mittal, 1994)
Gas constant R 8.314
103 J mol1 K1

Initial freezing point Tf0 Eq. (7) C (James et al., 2005)
Molecular weight of water Mw 0.018 kg mol1
Molecular weight of tylose Ms 6000 kg mol1 (Fink, 2003)
Latent heat of fusion l Eq. (10) J kg1 (Chamchong and Datta, 1999a)
Mass fraction of water xw 0.77
Mass fraction of ice xi Eq. (9) (Chamchong and Datta, 1999a)

5. Results and discussion

This section first describes validation of computed temperatures

against experimental data. The validated model is used to compute
transient temperatures and their non-uniformities for various salt
contents, load sizes, and cycled vs. inverter heating.

5.1. Model validation

Fig. 6 shows a reasonably good match between the measured

and simulated temperatures. The relative error at locations 1 and 2
are much smaller in magnitude (note the differing scales) than at
locations 3 and 4 due to smaller magnitudes of temperature rise at
those locations since they did not absorb as much microwave en-
ergy. Fig. 7 shows the simulated and measured top surface tem-
perature distributions. Both 60 s and 120 s data show good
agreement between model and experiment as they are within a few
degrees (note the differing color scales). They also show a similar
heating pattern with the colder region being around the center. The
experimentally measured tylose cube is approximately 5 C lower
in temperature than the simulated cube. This difference is most
likely due to the small amount of evaporation that lowers the
experimental temperature.

5.2. Understanding transient power absorption and temperature

rise

Fig. 4. Flow chart of the computation. Fig. 8a and b shows the change in volume-averaged EM field
 F. Chen et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 180 (2016) 87e100 93

Fig. 5. Temperature measurement using fiber optic probe: a) Schematic showing placement of the probe. Point 1 is located in the center of the tylose cube; point 2 is the midpoint
between the center and the surface closest to the magnetron. Points 3 and 4 are 12.5 mm from the surface farthest from the magnetron while point 5 is between them. Point 6 is
located 5 mm from the surface. Points 1e5 are located in the same x-y plane that cross-sections the center point. b) Picture from the experiment. c) Geometry of a fiber optic sensor
probe with A z 17 mm, B z 4 mm, C z 6.5 mm, D z 1.0 mm, and E z 2 m.

Fig. 6. Temperature at four locations in the tylose cube, 50
50
50 mm in size with a 3% salt concentration. The bars show the computed range (minimum, maximum) of
temperatures in a cylindrical volume of tylose that would have been taken up by the sensing region of a probe (diameter z 1.7 mm, height z 6.5 mm; see Fig. 5) if a probe were
present.
94 F. Chen et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 180 (2016) 87e100
Fig. 7. Top surface temperature of tylose cube ( C) (Fig. 2) at 60 s and 120 s, respec-
tively, obtained from the simulation (left) and the experiment (right). Note that the
color scales from the computational software and the infrared camera are different and
that scales cannot be remapped easily. (For interpretation of the references to color in
this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
intensity with time in the tylose cube and in the air in the micro-
wave cavity, respectively. Thus, the average electric field intensity
(Fig. 8a) in the cube decreases rapidly in the initial 120 s, causing
the average in the cavity air to increase (Fig. 8b). Since the tem-
perature increase in the cube occurs mainly on the surface (Fig. 10),
the waves will penetrate less deeply, decreasing the energy
absorbed in the cube. In other words, a shell of high impedance
forms that reflects more of the waves. But in the frozen core, both
the real and imaginary part of the permittivity are small so very
little energy is absorbed. The energy absorption fluctuates during
heating due to the fluctuation of dielectric properties with tem-
perature (Fig. 8c).
A simplified electromagnetic analysis consisting of plane waves
incident on a layered flat surface (Fig. 11) can be used to explain the
lower energy absorption withffi increased temperature. The wave
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
impedance for air, Z ¼ m=ε, is much smaller than for the solid
(tylose) since, while the permeability, m, is always approximately
the same value, the permittivity, ε, is much smaller for air than for
tylose. The parallel reflection coefficient, R, and transmission co-
efficient, T, of the electrical wave are (Pozar, 2009):
Za cos4  Zs cosq
Rk ¼
Za cos4 þ Zs cosq
2Zs cosq
Tk ¼
Za cos4 þ Zs cosq
and the corresponding coefficients for the perpendicular polarized
EM wave are
Zs cosq  Za cos4
R⊥ ¼
Zs cosq þ Za cos4
2Zs cosq
T⊥ ¼
Zs cosq þ Za cos4
As the dielectric constant rises drastically when the temperature
increases above 0 C, the solid impedance will decrease. For a fixed
angle of incidence, the Rk and R⊥ will increase as Tk and T⊥ decrease
with increasing temperature difference between the materials.
Hence, a region of low impedance forms near the surface (a shell, as
shown in Figs. 9 and 10) that reflects and does not transmit as much
of the EM waves but absorbs more of the waves because of the
increased dielectric loss. This effect can be seen in Fig. 8a, which
shows the average field intensity in the tylose decreases (while the
average field in the oven increases (Fig. 8b) with time as the un-
frozen outer shell forms from heating. The model can be treated as
a three-layer problem: low dielectric (low impedance) air, medium
dielectric (medium impedance) unfrozen tylose, and low dielectric
(high impedance) frozen tylose. The large difference in impedance
between the frozen and unfrozen layers will increase reflection and
thus more energy will be absorbed in the unfrozen region. As the
unfrozen region increases in temperature, the dielectric loss in-
creases, and thus more energy is absorbed near the surface before
reaching the frozen core region (Fig. 11).
Fig. 8d shows this nonuniform heating where the difference
between the warmest and the coldest temperatures in a 3% salt
50 mm tylose cube is nearly 100 C after 2 min even when the
average temperature is quite high. The warmest point is near the
surface of the cube facing the magnetron while the coldest tem-
perature is in the core.
5.3. Effect of salt concentration in tylose, representing variations in
the same food
Any change in salt concentration changes the fraction of un-
frozen water at a particular temperature. The fraction of unfrozen
water at any time during the heating process is shown in Fig. 8e.
The temperature data were post-processed in COMSOL to find all
the volumes with temperatures above the initial freezing point, as
shown in Fig. 3. These are added and divided by the total volume to
obtain the unfrozen fraction in Fig. 8e. As expected based on
freezing point depression, for a given duration of heating, the un-
frozen fraction is highest for the highest (4%) salt content.
Fig. 8f shows a very interesting and novel result pertaining to
how the power absorption varies with the unfrozen fraction as
heating continues. As the unfrozen fraction increases, the dielectric
constant increases, increasing reflection and reducing power ab-
sorption. Data for all three salt contents follow each other closely.
Fig. 10 shows the simulated electromagnetic field and temper-
ature distributions at a y-z plane at the center of a 50 mm tylose
cube after 60 s of heating for various salt concentrations. The
electric field intensities in the air in the microwave cavity have a
value of ~104 V/m while the electric field intensity in the tylose cube
(regardless of salt content) is ~103 V/m. The electric field strength is
noticeably different with salt concentrations, with a 2% salt con-
centration having the strongest field strength, while a 4% concen-
(12)
tration has the weakest. The region of the higher electric field
moves closer to the surface, i.e., there is more energy deposition
near the surface as salt content increases. The increase in dielectric
(13)
loss with salt content leads to greater energy absorption and the
greatest temperature rise as thermal properties do not change
much between these salt concentrations.
5.4. Comparison of inverter heating and cyclical heating
(14)
One of the goals of this study was to verify the claim that
inverter heating can improve the heating rate and temperature
uniformity while not overcooking food edges and corners during
(15) microwave thawing (Panasonic, 2015). This section compares re-
sults from the simulation of the cycled heating and inverter heating
 F. Chen et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 180 (2016) 87e100 95

Fig. 8. Effect of salt concentration on constant power heating of a 50 mm tylose cube, 600 s: a) average electric field intensity in tylose, b) average electric field intensity in cavity, c)
energy absorption in tylose cube, d) coldest, warmest and volume-average temperatures over time, e) unfrozen volume fraction over time, f) energy absorption plotted against
unfrozen volume fraction.

(Fig. 1). heated at the same time averaged rate.

Fig. 12 compares temperatures at four locations for cycled and To compare the heating uniformity between the two methods,
inverter heating. Both heating methods, on average, heat similarly the standard deviation, s, and coefficient of variance, COV, were
(the temperatures follow each other overall). This is expected since defined as
the average power is the same in both cases. But when viewed on
shorter time scales than the cycle time, the cyclic heating method vffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
u N    2
leads to faster increases in temperature followed by a short period u1 X !
SDðtÞ ¼ t T t; qi  TðtÞ : (16)
of cooling during which energy conducts whereas the temperature N i¼1
increase is steady for inverter heating. Overall, both methods
96 F. Chen et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 180 (2016) 87e100

Fig. 9. Temperature over a cross-section at mid-thickness (as shown) of 50 mm length tylose cube over various heating durations.

Fig. 10. Effect of salt content on the spatial variation of the electric field and temperature over a cross-section at mid-thickness (as shown) of a tylose cube at 60 s for 2%, 3%, and 4%
salt content, respectively.

COV ¼ SDðtÞ TðtÞ (17)

Fig. 11. Simplified description of microwaves incident on a material with varying
dielectric properties, showing reflected and refracted waves.
R
where TðtÞ ¼ ð TdVÞ=V is the average temperature of the tylose.
V
The standard deviation is a measure of the non-uniformity while
the COV normalizes the standard deviation by the average tem-
perature, and was shown to be a more effective measure of non-
uniformity (Geedipalli et al., 2007). A smaller COV represents
greater temperature uniformity. The standard deviation and COV
were plotted with time in Fig. 12b and c. These figures show that
the heating method had no significant impact on heating unifor-
mity since both measures of heating uniformity were nearly equal
for cyclic and inverter heating. One noticeable difference was at
early times when there was a 10 C difference between cyclic
heating and invert heating.
Due to the difference in temperatures over a cycle between
cycled and inverter heating, the reaction magnitude of color
 F. Chen et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 180 (2016) 87e100
Fig. 12. Comparison of inverter and cyclic heating: a) temperature at points 1, 2, and 5, b) coefficients of variance of temperatures, c) standard deviations of temperatures, d)
temperature and color at point 6. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
formation will be different and this difference in color should
accumulate over time. Fig. 12d shows the change in color at one
location near the corner. The corner location was chosen as the
temperatures are generally higher in this location so it may be
possible to find greater differences between cycled and inverter
heating there. Noticeably, there is nearly a 40 C difference in
temperature at the corner at early times between the cycled and
inverter heating. The cycled power heating rapidly defrosts the
tylose corner, accelerating color formation. Corners and edges are
also locations claimed by the manufacturer (Panasonic, 2015) to be
the locations where inverter heating improves quality (e.g., changes
to darker colors in corners and edges in cycled heating do not occur
in inverter heating as claimed). As shown in Fig. 12d, the lightness is
only very slightly lower for inverter heating at the end of 220 s (10
cycles) of cyclic heating, and this difference stays pretty much the
same after about the first four cycles of heating (less than 1% dif-
ference). This study therefore concludes that the two methods of
heating are unlikely to lead to any appreciable differences in color
at the food edges. Based on the results of Fig. 12, both methods of
microwave cooking thawed food at the same time averaged rate,
showed similar temperature uniformity, and heated the corners
similarly. While temperature, uniformity, and color differ during
cycles, they showed similar cooking patterns as inverter heating
when averaged over time.
97
5.5. Effect of load size on energy absorption and temperature
The effect of load size on the heating rate and uniformity for a
tylose cube are shown in Figs. 13 and 14. Although average tem-
peratures (Fig. 8) increase above 0 C for cubes 50 mm or smaller
over the 120 s time period, the minimum temperatures do not
increase above 0 C unless the sample is 40 mm or smaller. Corners
and edges that reach much higher temperatures influence the
average significantly, sending it above 0 C, while there are still
regions below 0 C. This spatial non-uniformity of temperatures
can be seen in Fig. 13, which displays temperatures over a mid-
section (see figure legend for details). Fig. 13 shows that the
lowest temperatures for each size are near the centers while the
highest temperatures are at the edges facing the magnetron. The
non-uniformity of temperatures can also be seen in Fig. 14c, which
plots standard deviations of temperatures in a cube over time for
various sizes. They show the common pattern (Geedipalli et al.,
2007) of increasing with time initially (as surface regions are
heated to a greater extent than interior regions) and later dropping
as diffusion equilibrates temperatures and also the maximum
temperature is limited to near 100 C. The time when non-
uniformity is highest (the peak) extends as size increases. A
longer heating period is needed before the center starts to change
temperature in a larger size and leads to greater differences be-
tween the surface and certain regions. The highest non-uniformity
(the peak of the standard deviation curve) also increases with size.
The effect of material size on total power absorption is shown in
98 F. Chen et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 180 (2016) 87e100

Fig. 13. The effect of product size on heating is shown using temperatures at two times at the plane shown in the cube above. As size increases, heating becomes less uniform
volumetrically, ultimately changing to corner and edge heating.

Fig. 14. Effect of tylose cube size on heating: a) center temperature, b) volume-average temperature, c) standard deviations of temperatures, d) experimentally tested center
temperature changes.

Fig. 15. It shows S11, which represents the power reflected from the
transmitted power at the port where microwaves enter the cavity.
Values of 10, 7 and 4 dB represent 10%, 20%, and 40% reflected
power, respectively, so the lower the S11 value, the more completely
the power is absorbed (less is reflected) by the load (tylose), i.e., the
more energy efficient is the heating process. Fig. 15a shows the
30 mm tylose cube to be typically the most efficient in energy
absorption over the entire heating duration. The smallest size cube
(10 mm) with S11 of 2, or 80%, microwave reflected back into the
magnetron absorbs the least power but many of the larger sizes
also exhibit lower power absorption. This power absorption is
complex and depends on factors such as shift in resonant frequency
and mode pattern in the cavity.
A load placed inside a microwave cavity shifts the resonant
 F. Chen et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 180 (2016) 87e100 99

Fig. 15. Heating efficiency for various tylose cube sizes: a) S11 of various cube sizes over time. The 30 mm cube is always the lowest the majority of the time, which means it has the
strongest microwave absorption ability, b) Simulated 30 mm and 50 mm cube S11 from 2.1 GHz to 2.8 GHz at the 60th second and; c) Energy absorption per volume. The smallest
cube's energy absorption ability is the strongest in the initial 40 s but then becomes the weakest.

frequency of the cavity, depending on the dielectric properties and
size of the load (Pozar, 2009). As the tylose heats and its dielectric
properties change continuously, it continually changes the reso-
nant frequency of the cavity. Energy absorption is strongest at the
resonant frequency of the cavity since that is when the electro-
magnetic fields are the strongest. Thus, S11 is lowest at the resonant
frequency of the cavity in the presence of the load. As the resonant
frequency for the cavity shifts, while the excitation remains at
2.45 GHz, absorption in the load decreases, i.e., S11 increases.
Fig. 15b shows how S11 would change if the excitation frequency is
changed. This figure is obtained by running simulations at varying
excitation frequencies (x-axis) and plotting data after 60 s of
heating when the values have generally stabilized (Fig. 15a). The
two curves for 30 mm and 50 mm cubes show a similar trend, with
lowest S11 (highest energy absorption) at their corresponding
shifted resonant frequencies. Notice that for the 30 mm cube, the
resonant frequency is very close to the excitation (2.45 GHz) and
this reiterates the results from Fig. 15a, which shows that S11 is the
lowest for the 30 mm cube.
Fig. 15c shows that with continually changing dielectric prop-
erties energy absorption increases (S11 decreases) during the initial
5 s, followed by decrease, and eventually stabilizing after 40 s. This
is because of the dielectric resonator effect. Because of the low
impedance (due mostly to the high dielectric constant) of tylose
(see Fig. 9), the tylose cube can itself be a high dielectric resonator
at the surface. Waves in the tylose cube reflect back and forth
(which is analogous to what happens in the metal cavity) and is
ultimately absorbed by the tylose. With the overall temperature
rise of the tylose cube, the dielectric properties change and the
resonator effect decreases (S11 stabilizes).
6. Conclusion
The model showed excellent validation with optical fiber point
temperature probes and infrared surface heating profiles. Whether
inverter or cyclical heating was involved, there was little difference
in overall heating rate or uniformity. The salt concentration
significantly changed the electrical properties of the tylose cube but
did not significantly change the heating rate due to the impedance
shell that formed on the surface of the cube, preventing EM waves
from thawing the core. The heating uniformity and thawing time
grew exponentially with length while energy density demon-
strated maximum (most efficient) energy usage at 30 mm. Overall,
the model demonstrates a fast and effective way of predicting mi-
crowave heating rate and uniformity in a beef substitute.
Acknowledgment
This work is supported in part by a scholarship from the China
Scholarship Council (CSC) under CSC grant No. 201306240024.
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