Moisture Barrier Property Test of Paper-aluminum-plastic Composite Package for Rice Cereal

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Rice cereal is usually used as a supplementary food of breast milk or other infant formula food, which provides necessary nutrition to the babies. Rice cereal is mainly made of millet or rice, formulated with sugar, vegetables, fruit, egg and meat, etc. which contain rich amount of minerals including calcium, phosphorus, iron, zinc and vitamin.

The most commonly used package for rice cereal is paper-aluminum-plastic cans. Once the water vapor in external environment enter inside the package, the rice cereal may become caking and eventually get deteriorated, which may cause harm to the health of babies. In order to guarantee the quality of rice cereal within its shelf life, the packaging materials should have sufficient water vapor barier property.

This article provides a simplified test method of water vapor barrier property of paper-aluminum-plastic cans for your reference which may be helpful to the manufacturers of rice cereal when selecting packaging materials for their products. We used Labthink’s W3/230 Water Vapor Transmission Rate Test System as the testing instrument.

Figure 1. Infant Rice Cereal Package

Figure 2. W3/230 Water Vapor Transmission Rate Test System

Currently there are mainly two categories of test methods for water vapor transmission rate i.e. gravimetric method (also known as cup method and divided into dry cup method and wet cup method) and sensor method (including electrolytic sensor method, infrared sensor method and humidity sensor method). Labthink’s W3/230 Water Vapor Transmission Rate Test System adopts infrared sensor method.

The tests shall be performed according to the following procedures.

Apply some adhesives on the bottle mouth and then fix the specimen on the sample support which is specialized for package test. Then connect the prepared specimen to the instrument with pipes and use a sealing bag to cover the specimen tightly.

Set specimen name, test temperature and test humidity, etc.

Adjust the pressure of nitrogen and make the humidity inside the test chamber reach preset value. Adjust the nitrogen flow rate in upper and lower chambers to standard values by turning the adjusting knob for flow rate.

Click Start Test to start the test. The system will record the water content change in the lower moisture side and calculate the final test results.

For more details about Labthink’s W3/230 Water Vapor Transmission Rate Test System, please visit www.labthink.com

About Labthink Instruments Co., Ltd:

Labthink Instruments Co., Ltd is one leading supplier of packaging testing instruments, which is headquartered in Jinan, China and operated in Boston, U.S.A.