Law of Cooling for calculating time

Hello everyone.

For corrective action and related purposes i have been tasked with deciding whether there was a risk or not in the product during transport.

We are carrying frozen chicken meat in refrigerated trucks

Intended procedure is;

-Initial internal temperature of the meat <-18 degree C

-Ambient temperature of the truck <-18 degree C

-Acceptable internal temperature of the meat <-15 degree C

-Transport duration varies.

So, would it be appropriate for us to use Newton's Law of cooling to decide the temperature of the product for a duration of X amount of time makes the internal temperature below -15 ? 

Can i use any constant in this situation without carrying out a simulation representing the conditions, such as data from blast freezing of the product?

You should be able to calculate using newton's laws in this situation

Given that raw poultry turns into a solid mass (unless it's IQF), the likelyhood of any increase in the internal temp is slim under the conditions you've prescribed

The thing is i don't have the cooling constant, i have found some literature concerning heat capacity of the poultry meat but i don't know how to interpret it without adding into heat flux from the air and other heat transfer paths such as conduction via the packaging material.

It seems i have to carry out a simulation to decide the constant?

I think you may be overthinking this  :shades:

Assuming your refer is set to -18C and your product is also -18, zero heat transfer will/could occur  hence zero risk

Now,  if you want to assume you've had a refer failure(and the trailer has a data logger) you could calculate just how long it would take your product to rise to -15C , but you'd also need to factor in the exterior conditions (temp, humidity, clouds or sun)

I used to import loads of fresh poultry from 3000 miles away.  It was shipped using layers of dry ice. It always arrived at 4C (as it should).  I really think you can make a risk analysis w/o the calculations

Thank you scampi.

The issue is actually deciding about whether opening a case of corrective action.

Thing is, everything mostly goes according to plan and most of the time the product doesn't even reach close to -15 

But i keep receiving Corrective Action pleas such as;

The data logger shows temperature of the truck was -12 for 4 hours.

I want to actually roughly decide whether product is closer to the limit. 

I keep thinking instead of placing an environmental data logger, may be a probe inserted into a product would make an alternative?

I tought about heat transfer from truck to outside, but if the ambient temperature is constant i tought i would neglect the capacity of the refrigeration is adequate or not.

Seems like i didn't make myself clear.