Mechanical and Thermal Characterisation of Polymer Films Exposed to Filling Products
(2019) KASM15 20182Centre for Analysis and Synthesis
- Abstract
- Knowledge on how polymeric materials changes or is affected when exposed to
products is of interest and importance for many commercial applications. Understanding the product interaction on packaging materials is the key to preventing errors and increasing the quality of products. At Tetra Pak®, product packaging is created to make food and drink safe and accessible everywhere. Therefore, packaging solutions for products must be constantly developed and improved in order to meet customer needs. Today’s packaging contains many different polymeric materials and it does not look like it will change in the near future. Therefore, it is of importance to find an experimental working method to test and perform simulations, that are as close as... (More) - Knowledge on how polymeric materials changes or is affected when exposed to
products is of interest and importance for many commercial applications. Understanding the product interaction on packaging materials is the key to preventing errors and increasing the quality of products. At Tetra Pak®, product packaging is created to make food and drink safe and accessible everywhere. Therefore, packaging solutions for products must be constantly developed and improved in order to meet customer needs. Today’s packaging contains many different polymeric materials and it does not look like it will change in the near future. Therefore, it is of importance to find an experimental working method to test and perform simulations, that are as close as possible to real behaviour of the material.
In this thesis, several experimental methods have been used to study the interaction between different products on low density polyethylene. Methods such
as Wide-Angle X-ray Scattering (WAXS), tensile tests, thickness measurement,
product uptake and Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) have been used to
study the interaction with products at Tetra Pak® and LTH. From the experimental
tests, it was difficult to observe large difference in crystallinity and mechanical properties in the short period of the experiment. However, large differences could be seen in the thickness variation, which may be important to look into in the future as it may have a major impact on test results. (Less) - Popular Abstract
- The packaging industry is a huge and growing sector but is facing pressure from manufactures and customers to look good, reduce cost and energy use. Therefore, to have a good package requires ones to understand how packaging materials react to everyday uses and interactions with food and products. The goal of this thesis is to understand how the most common polymer material reacts to dierent everyday food at dierent exposure time. A combination of mechanical and thermal properties of the polymer are rst studied and, with the obtained knowledge, experimental tests are the performed in an experimental environment as close to real environment as possible.
To study food interactions with polymer, many experimental methods were used.Weight... (More) - The packaging industry is a huge and growing sector but is facing pressure from manufactures and customers to look good, reduce cost and energy use. Therefore, to have a good package requires ones to understand how packaging materials react to everyday uses and interactions with food and products. The goal of this thesis is to understand how the most common polymer material reacts to dierent everyday food at dierent exposure time. A combination of mechanical and thermal properties of the polymer are rst studied and, with the obtained knowledge, experimental tests are the performed in an experimental environment as close to real environment as possible.
To study food interactions with polymer, many experimental methods were used.Weight measurements on the polymer before and after exposure of food was one method to try to study and explain food interactions in the larger scale. But, to understand the interactions in the smaller scale, we used a technique that directed a beam of X-ray radiation on the polymer which gave information on the atomic scale. A thermal method where we quickly heat and cool the polymer, were used to understand how temperature aects the polymers properties after exposure to food.
We also pull apart samples of polymers by tensile test to study how the whole polymer sample reacts to mechanical stress after exposure to food. Thereafter, electron microscopy was used to obtain high quality images of broken polymer samples on a very small scale. Lastly, thickness measurements were nally performed to study exactly how thick the polymer sheets were in reality.
This thesis has shown that the polymer pick up and absorb the food, which should aect the properties of the polymer. But from the experiments we have not seen any big changes in properties of the exposed polymers. This means that it is unlikely that food interaction occurs at the atomic scale, as we originally expected. Therefore, in the future it would be interesting to look into larger length scale than have been studied in this thesis. Lastly, the thickness measurement showed large thickness variations in the supplied polymer, and this is believed to give an error
on all the tensile tests. Therefore a way to reduce thickness dierences is needed to fully understand the interaction between product and polymers. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/8967509
- author
- Vu, Erik LU
- supervisor
- organization
- alternative title
- How everyday products affect polymers in the packaging industry.
- course
- KASM15 20182
- year
- 2019
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- polymer technology, polymerteknologi
- language
- English
- id
- 8967509
- date added to LUP
- 2019-02-22 15:26:47
- date last changed
- 2019-02-22 15:26:47
@misc{8967509,
abstract = {{Knowledge on how polymeric materials changes or is affected when exposed to
products is of interest and importance for many commercial applications. Understanding the product interaction on packaging materials is the key to preventing errors and increasing the quality of products. At Tetra Pak®, product packaging is created to make food and drink safe and accessible everywhere. Therefore, packaging solutions for products must be constantly developed and improved in order to meet customer needs. Today’s packaging contains many different polymeric materials and it does not look like it will change in the near future. Therefore, it is of importance to find an experimental working method to test and perform simulations, that are as close as possible to real behaviour of the material.
In this thesis, several experimental methods have been used to study the interaction between different products on low density polyethylene. Methods such
as Wide-Angle X-ray Scattering (WAXS), tensile tests, thickness measurement,
product uptake and Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) have been used to
study the interaction with products at Tetra Pak® and LTH. From the experimental
tests, it was difficult to observe large difference in crystallinity and mechanical properties in the short period of the experiment. However, large differences could be seen in the thickness variation, which may be important to look into in the future as it may have a major impact on test results.}},
author = {{Vu, Erik}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Mechanical and Thermal Characterisation of Polymer Films Exposed to Filling Products}},
year = {{2019}},
}