AUTOMATION OF A TRANSIT CALORIMETER FOR INTEGRATED MEASUREMENT OF THE MAIN THERMOPHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF DAIRY PRODUCTS

Abstract

The application of the transit calorimetry method makes it possible to deepen the knowledge about the fuzzy phase transition in dairy products, clarify information about technological and thermophysical characteristics of products, establish links between them, reduce energy and material resources per unit of finished product. Maintenance of stationary and transient modes by manual control before the appearance, in addition to the systematic and random errors, which often did not fit into their normal distribution. Automation of transit calorimeter, which belongs to thermometric calorimeters and works in scanning mode, allows not only to increase the accuracy of complex measurement of thermophysical characteristics of labile materials, but to obtain fundamentally new information - to establish a functional relationship between fat and thermal conductivity, cream hysteresis, etc. The sharp decrease in random errors due to calorimeter automation has led not only to increased accuracy of TFH determination, but also to obtaining new information. Thus, as a result of research it was possible to solve the "inverse" problem - to establish the dependence of fat on thermal conductivity, close to functional. This is important for the dairy industry, as thermal conductivity can be determined much faster than fat. It is also established that the heat capacity of milk fat in the temperature range of active phase transformations depends on whether the milk fat is heated or cooled. This can lead to the correction of reference data. The relatively simple scheme of automation of calorimetric installations facilitated the work of the operator, increasing the accuracy of measurements, made it possible to obtain fundamentally new information. It can be used in other devices when the primary converters produce small DC signals.