Neapolitan pizza is required to be baked in traditional wood-fired ovens, according to Specification of Production n°56/2010. However, airborne and hazard pollutants due to wood combustion may lead to severe air quality impacts, thus design and development of electric oven, alternative to wood-fired ones, is a suitable target for air pollution control strategies. In this paper, a three-dimensional Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) model is developed to evaluate thermal performances of an electric oven for baking Neapolitan pizzas. The developed CFD model comprises the continuity, momentum and energy equations, whereas the standard k-ε approach is used for turbulence closure and the surface-to-surface model is applied for radiative heat transfer mechanism. Coupled conduction-convection and radiation is taken into account to assess the role of walls bounding the cooking chamber in the heat transfer process. Electrical heaters located into the bed and dome walls of the cooking chamber provide the heat generation, allowing the baking of pizzas. A condition of full load oven is investigated with nine pizzas placed on the bed of the baking chamber. Different thermo-physical model properties are investigated. Results highlight that the radiative heat transfer is the very predominant mechanisms for pizza baking. Moreover, the role of surface pizza emissivity value on temperature time evolution is investigated, considering three different emissivity values. In addition, a comparison between constant and variable thermo-physical properties models is carried out to scrutinize the validity of the variable thermo-physical properties on thermal baking performance.

INNOVATIVE ELECTRIC OVENS FOR PIZZA BAKING: A NUMERICAL THERMAL INVESTIGATION

Biagio Morrone
;
Mena Ciarmiello
2018

Abstract

Neapolitan pizza is required to be baked in traditional wood-fired ovens, according to Specification of Production n°56/2010. However, airborne and hazard pollutants due to wood combustion may lead to severe air quality impacts, thus design and development of electric oven, alternative to wood-fired ones, is a suitable target for air pollution control strategies. In this paper, a three-dimensional Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) model is developed to evaluate thermal performances of an electric oven for baking Neapolitan pizzas. The developed CFD model comprises the continuity, momentum and energy equations, whereas the standard k-ε approach is used for turbulence closure and the surface-to-surface model is applied for radiative heat transfer mechanism. Coupled conduction-convection and radiation is taken into account to assess the role of walls bounding the cooking chamber in the heat transfer process. Electrical heaters located into the bed and dome walls of the cooking chamber provide the heat generation, allowing the baking of pizzas. A condition of full load oven is investigated with nine pizzas placed on the bed of the baking chamber. Different thermo-physical model properties are investigated. Results highlight that the radiative heat transfer is the very predominant mechanisms for pizza baking. Moreover, the role of surface pizza emissivity value on temperature time evolution is investigated, considering three different emissivity values. In addition, a comparison between constant and variable thermo-physical properties models is carried out to scrutinize the validity of the variable thermo-physical properties on thermal baking performance.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11591/388357
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