French fries are a very popular food commodity across many cultural backgrounds on Earth and as such they may be appreciated by long-term space travelers. The process of frying in hot oil is associated with complex heat and mass transfer along with the growth and detachment of water vapor bubbles. These phenomena are strongly affected by buoyancy and gravitational acceleration making the study of frying at space conditions a challenging task. In their new work, scientists from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki examined potato frying in hot oil during the short duration low gravity conditions achieved in ESA’s parabolic flight campaigns.
“Dietary nutrition and uptake of Earth-like foods are extremely important aspects for the health and performance of astronauts, especially during future planned long-term space missions,” said Aristotle University of Thessaloniki’s Professor Thodoris Karapantsios and colleagues.
“Despite the major progress in studying and designing systems for crop cultivation in microgravity conditions in the last years, there hasn’t been equal interest in food preparation processes and cooking.”
“There are several reasons for this but it is chiefly because at present astronauts stay in space for a few months at most, so there is no serious nutritional or psychological need for Earth-like food habits. This, however, will change drastically in long-term missions, e.g., to Moon and Mars.”
To study how microgravity influences cooking techniques such as frying, the authors designed a novel experimental carousel-type apparatus that operates in weightlessness.
They conducted their experiments on two ESA parabolic flight campaigns, whereby an aircraft flies in repeated arcs to recreate brief moments of weightlessness.
“We filmed the frying process with a high-speed, high-resolution camera to capture the bubble dynamics such as growth rate, size and distribution,…
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