The effect of temperature
Shown right is an indicative water activity isotherm displaying the hysteresis often encountered depending on whether the water is being added to the dry material or removed (drying) from the wet material. This hysteresis is due to non-reversible structural changes and non-equilibrium effects. There are many empirical equations (and tables) that attempt to describe this behavior but, although indicative, none predict with sufficient accuracy and the water activity isotherm should be experimentally determined for each material. In the food industry, such empirical equations combine contributions from the ingredients to give an estimate of aw, which is then used to estimate the mold-free shelf life (MFSL; Log10(MFSL,days)=7.91-(8.1xαw) , 21 °C, [443]).
The water activity (aw) usually increases with temperature and pressure increases. e For small temperature increases (T1 T2) at low aw, an often-applicable relationship is: where ΔH is an enthalpy change (for example, absorption or mixing), R is the gas constant and T is in Kelvin. A similar equation is derived on the colligative properties page. Such changes in water activity may cause water migration between food components. Increasing the temperature reduces the mold-free shelf life.
The multi-ingredient nature of food and its processing (for example, cooking) commonly result in a range of water activities being present. Foods containing macroscopic or micro structural aqueous pools of differing water activity will be prone to time and temperature dependent water migration from areas with high aw to those with low aw; a useful property used in the salting of fish and cheese but in other cases may have disastrous organoleptic consequences. Such changes in water activity may cause water migration between food components. As the humidity of the air is typically 50-80% (aw = 0.5-0.8), foods with lower aw will tend to gain water whilst those with higher aw tend to lose water.