Pinholes can be a major headache in high barrier packaging for medical, industrial and food packaging.
Films pinhole easily during manufacture and even sub-mm gauges of aluminium foil invariably contain pinholes.
This allows moisture, oxygen and CO2 (etc.) to enter or exit the package degrading its contents, reducing quality and reducing shelf-life.
The solution to boosting shelf-life and quality lies in the nearness of the match between the respiration rates, including pinholes, and the packaging’s oxygen, carbon dioxide and water vapour permeabilities.
Versaperm’s multi-gas option can determine these to a high degree of accuracy under a wide range of environmental options.
The equipment can also be used to determine the characteristics of the pinholes.
Several of these environmental factors affect the barrier properties of a packaging material including temperature and relative humidity.
Vapour permeability varies dramatically depending on the gas or vapour under question, for example the permeation rates for water vapour, oxygen and CO2 can be hundreds or even thousands of times different.
The Versaperm multi-gas meter provides accurate results that are recorded and displayed on the instrument’s touchscreen for further analysis.
Optionally, the instrument can measure the concentration of virtually any other gas including the ripening agent ethylene, at temperatures between -20 and +65 °C.
The new respiration meter has a highly automated computerised control and, as well as the instrument, Versaperm offers both a consultancy and a vapour/gas permeability measurement testing service.
