Abstract: The rising level of refrigerator preservation technology has met the people's pursuit of dietary safety and health, food taste, texture, nutrition and other factors. A new method is used to improve the quick-freezing effect and thus the quick-freezing preservation of foodstuffs by using a cold storage tray, and the time of spending the zone of maximal crystal forming (ZMCF) is used as a criterion to judge the quick-freezing effect. The experimental results show that ZMCF is reduced by 49.2% compared to conventional storage methods, thus improving the quick-freezing effect. When conducting food testing, as the test package simulates the physical properties of beef, the test package cannot characterise the quick-freeze properties. A food freezing heat transfer model is developed to calculate the cooling time of food products with a minimum deviation of 5% from the experimental cooling time, hoping to provide a useful reference for testing laboratories to avoid multiple experiments and save costs.

Key words: Cool storage tray, Quick-freezing effect, Zone of maximal crystal forming, Cooling time, Food freezing heat transfer model