A phenomenon of waiting time in phase change problems driven by radiative heat transfer

In the paper (J. Food Process Eng. 2008; in press) we emphasized that during a phase change process in which the heat input is driven by a radiation transfer mechanism, a peculiar phenomenon may occur, characterized by a temporary stop of the increase of the boundary temperature due to a sudden change of the heat transfer coefficient upon phase transition. This time interval is needed to allow the thermal properties of the surface to evolve toward a state that is compatible with the heat intake rate corresponding to the new phase. The occurrence of the waiting time is motivated and studied for a general one-dimensional Stefan problem. Then an application is presented to the much complicated problem considered in (J. Food Process Eng. 2008; in press), namely, the model for frying process.