Previsione delle variazioni di composizione delle atmosfere protettive in imballaggi permeabili

A protective atmosphere in a flexible packaging can change its composition by means of gases interactions with the food components or gases diffusion through the container. Such diffusion corresponds both to permeability phenomena and to unselective diffusion through leaks in the material or package, while this last phenomenon can not be foreseen in any way, as it is completely occasional, permeability is largely predictable by the diffusional properties of the materials and internal atmosphere composition. In this work a computing procedure is proposed, which allows to predict the atmosphere evolution only on the basis of permeability phenomena, and are presented the tests that werecarried out to verify its reliability. The gaschromatographic analysis of the atmosphere changes, measured in packages closed with different gas compositions and produced with different materials and geometry, demonstrated the effectiveness of the iterative computing procedure suggested, which could represent an useful tool for optimising the package design in order to reach the best results in protective atmosphere packaging technology.