In the food industry, heat treatment of highly viscous fluids in continuous processes is becoming more and more common, and the process should perform as a homogenous thermal treatment, in order to ensure quality and safety of the final product. To improve treatment homogeneity, geometric modifications can be used even in the laminar regime, to induce flow perturbation and mixing. The objectives of this work include: (i) Investigation of the residence time distribution (RTD) for industrial indirect joule effect heaters (JEH) with smooth (ST) and modified (MT) tubes, (ii) Demonstration and quantification of the efficiency of the geometrical modifications, and (iii) Proposition of a single semi-empirical model including the flow regime (10