Background

          Gas permeation through plastic is one of the most important criteria in packaging material design especially for food and pharmaceutical products. Ingress and egress of permeants may dramatically change physical, chemical and microbiological qualities of packaged products.

          A number of techniques and commercial instruments for measuring gas permeation of plastic films have been employed. Mostly, the apparatuses are expensive, specific to certain application, i.e. for flat film, and have a high cost of maintenance. These pose some obstructions on the progress in academic areas. These were the reasons that led to the development of permeation test cell which should be simple, inexpensive and suitable for dual application of which the test samples could be either flat films or preformed articles. The isostatic principles was employed and a gas chromatography directly connected to the cell detected and measured the amount of permeated gas.

          Permeation cell assembly

          Permeation cell:

• Two chambers constructed of stainless steel No. 304
• Common lower chamber
• Changeable upper chamber
  

          Gas flow assembly:

                 It is based on the isostatic principles described in ISO 15105-2:2003(E) which is specific to flat film samples and ASTM 1307-02 and Loudenslagel and William (1970) specific to preformed packages.

Permeation cell

Gas flow assembly

Detection assembly

Film permeation measurement