Multicomponent phase transition kinetics in cereal foam—part II: impact of microstructural properties

In the bakery industry, a considerably high amount of energy is used for the baking process. A possibility to decrease the baking time by means of optimized heat transfer through the bread microstructure would lead to less required baking time and cost reduction. Thermal treatment of cereal foam implicates thermo-physical processes such as simultaneous heat and mass transfer associated with evaporation–condensation-based heat transfer through the bubbles. Numerical investigations are carried out to deliver sophisticated insight into the heat transfer processes at microscale, supporting process understanding and visualization of phenomena inside the foam bubbles. In a further step, the elaborated knowledge is employed to determine the main influencing parameter on the heat transfer through the foam microstructure by means of lattice Boltzmann modeling techniques. For optimization purposes, the microstructure as well as individual foam lamella configurations are considered in the parameter variation studies.