I didn't realize, though it's perhaps obvious in retrospect, that CFD is used for things like that. Other CDF studies "include thermal processing studies on pineapple slices in juice [10], solid particles in water [11], peas in water [12] and asparagus in brine [13]. The use of CFD for microbial destruction calculations during thermal processing (for table olives in brine) has been also reported [14]."
Neat!