Fig. 4 shows plots of the two forms of the Maxwell-Eucken model, and it is clear that the form in which air is the dispersed phase (sponge/foam-like materials) predicts significantly higher thermal conductivities, than when air is the continuous phase (particulate materials), other than for very low or very high porosities. The EMT, CC and levy models are also shown in Fig. 4. They each traverse the space between ME1 and ME2 in different ways due to the structures they represent.
The objective of this paper was to recommend a procedure in
which nothing, including the nature of the air distribution, is
assumed to be known about the structure of the food; however,
some general inferences may be drawn about the air-distribution
from the porosity of the food. Specifically, if the porosity is ‘low’.