Improvement of Temperature Uniformity of Instant Rice Inside Plastic Rectangular Container Under Microwave Reheating

To improve the temperature uniformity of instant rice in a plastic rectangular container, during microwave reheating, the changes of temperature distribution were analyzed by using experiment and simulation method. A three-dimensional finite element model was established to describe microwave reheating of instant rice to predict the temperature. The results showed that the highest temperature occurred at the corners and bottom layer. The cold spots were located in the sample interior center. The simulation results in the model matched relatively with the experimental results. A method of intermittent microwave reheating was proposed to improve the temperature uniformity of convenient rice, and the optimal combination was the time of microwave reheating was 180 s, and the intermittent ratio was 1 : 3.