Blow-up and stability of a nonlocal diffusion-convection problem arising in Ohmic heating of foods (Q1847668)

A very interesting model arising from the sterilization of food is presented, together with various results concerning the existence of solutions, their stability and their blow up. This model of Ohmic heating is described by a nonlocal initial boundary value problem. The behaviour of the source term depends on the electrical resistivity \(f\). At first the existence of time-dependent solutions is examined and later the article is divided in two main parts according to the monotonicity of the electrical resistivity. If \(f\) is decreasing and \[ \int_0^\infty f(s) ds <\infty \] then there exists a critical value \(\lambda^*\) of the parameter \(\lambda\) such that for \(\lambda>\lambda^*\) the time-dependent solutions blow up in finite time. For \(0<\lambda\leq\lambda^*\) in the case where there exist at least two solutions, blow up occurs for large initial data. If \(f\) is still decreasing but \[ \int_0^\infty f(s) ds = \infty \] then the authors obtain global in time, time-dependent solutions. In the case of increasing \(f\), the solutions are time-dependent, global in time and uniformly bounded.