Journal of Food, Agriculture and Environment

Optimization of food packaging to improve food safety

Author(s):

Jan Hron, Tomas Macak

Recieved Date: 2013-05-18, Accepted Date: 2013-10-21

Abstract:

Primary packaging has a great influence on food quality and safety. It can be considered a four-component system: the food, the internal environment, the package, and the external environment. A good understanding of the interactions between these components is necessary for designing food packaging. Interactions between food and the internal environment are the most important factors, since the rate of food deterioration under the conditions of the internal environment frequently governs the shelf life of a package. A robust and airtight seal is required to preserve product “freshness” and shelf life. It often serves as a barrier to delay the ingress of moisture or oxygen from the external environment, and extends the shelf life of foods that are sensitive to moisture and oxygen. Therefore, the packaging in food production is a critical process. One of the leverage points in this process is the seal’s strength. When wrapping materials are joined together, the two important leverage variables are sealing pressure and sealing temperature. The experimental purpose of this paper was to determine the “optimal” process requirements in order to provide the maximum tensile strength in the seal. From the theoretical aspect, this paper utilizes the powerful technique of “Design of Experiments” (DOE) to study the effect of several process parameters on the response or quality characteristics of a process or product. The first objective is to identify the parameters of food packaging welding, which influence the response strength of a weld. The second objective is to identify the process parameters that affect the variability in the weld strength. The application of DOE avoids specialist knowledge of statistical analysis by replacing it with a graphical methodology, as applied here in the production of the welding process of packaging for food and agricultural products.

Keywords:

Design of experiments, packaging, food quality and safety, path of steepest ascent method, response surface regression

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Journal: Journal of Food, Agriculture and Environment
Year: 2013
Volume: 11
Issue: 3&4
Category: Food and Health
Pages: 423-428

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