Modeling Ice Crystal Coarsening in Concentrated Disperse Food Systems

Recrystallization of ice in frozen concentrated aqueous sugar solutions was treated as a diffusion controlled process and has been modeled using a combination of a modified Lifshitz, Slyozov and Wagner theory for coarsening in dispersed phase systems and a mean field theory. The model has been tested using aqueous fructose solutions, water ices and ice creams under a range of time and temperature histories. The model provides data which are in accord with experiments and also suggests that recrystallization cannot be modeled using only diffusion. In certain circumstances other processes must also be considered.