Abstract
Liquid residue is a major issue in fresh food packaging, especially for meat products. This work investigates capillary recesses directly integrated into PET packaging film, with targeted plasma treatment of the recesses to enhance their liquid retention capacity. Localised oxygen plasma treatment (oxygen flow rate: 80 cm3/min, pressure: 0.14 mbar, power: 240 W) of PET recesses introduced polar oxygen groups onto their surface and increased their wettability. It is proposed that the difference in wetting characteristics of the recesses and rest of the packaging surface enhanced the capillary valve effect, which dramatically increased the liquid retention capacity. Untreated recess samples (diameter: 9 mm) had retention capacity of around 0.70 g, which increased to 1.50 g after localised O2 plasma treatment. Even after aging of over 60 days, the plasma-treated recesses maintained the enhanced retention capabilities. The estimated resulting retention capacity of recesses of diameter 9 mm was 2972 ± 62 mL/m2, which is comparable with conventional absorbent pads (3000 mL/m2). This demonstrated the viability of applying plasma treatment in food packaging to effectively isolate any excessive exudate using only the packaging film.
Highlights
Food packaging has a vital role in prolonging food shelf life and ensuring safer and fresher food in the supply chain (Biji et al, 2015)
This work has demonstrated that localised increases in surface wettability of capillary recess walls by plasma treatment is an effective method to increase their liquid retention capacity
Plasma-treated polyethylene terephthalate (PET) recesses of extended sizes demonstrated a considerable and long-lasting increase in their liquid retention capacity when compared with un treated PET samples
Summary
Food packaging has a vital role in prolonging food shelf life and ensuring safer and fresher food in the supply chain (Biji et al, 2015). Excessive liquid residues and moisture within the packaging is still a big challenge to fresh food packaging, in particular for liquid-exuding food, such as meat, fish and poultry (Gaikwad et al, 2019). High exudate content has a negative impact on the food packaging as it accelerates quality deterioration and compromises safety of the packaged food This is due to the increase in water activity, which enhances the growth of spoilage microorganisms and pathogenic bac teria (Gaikwad et al, 2019; Gouvea et al, 2016). It is crucial to isolate the free-moving exudate in food packaging
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