An Ohmic Heating Model Based on the Thermal Circuit Method: Case of Study for Parameter Determination

Currently, ohmic heating is a method with a wide potential as an alternative thermal process in the industry. However, the success of this method depends on the rate of the generated heat by the right material's selection and its geometry. Due to its complexity, the heating systems are usually modeled by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) or finite element method (FEM). However, in this paper, an alternative model representation was used, and this model does not consider the temperature gradients and uses thermal resistance and capacitance as steady-state and transient analog parameters. The parameters are calculated using MATLAB considering the geometry, as well as the electrical and thermal properties of the material to heat. The proposed circuit is solved by applying the Laplace transform. Finally, the temperature performance of the model and the experimental system are compared with noncontrolled and controlled experiments.