One of the leading quality concerns of packaged food manufacturers is the seal integrity of their packages. They must ensure that the package seal stays intact and uncompromised from packaging in the food factory to retail stores’ shelves until the customers consume it. The consequences of a leakage or a damaged seal are undesirable as it may cause food damage and decay. It might lead to product recalls and an overall loss of credibility of the manufacturer.
In general, most food manufacturers incorporate stringent quality control measures to check for seal integrity before shipping the products to ensure maximum shelf life. Quality control personnel will do batch leak testing and record the data. Of the many existing food packaging testing methods, the bubble leak detector and the vacuum decay leak detector are the two most widely known instrument to conduct leak testing in the industry.
The bubble leak detector involves submerging the package in a container of water to check if there is any bubble formed due to the leaks in the packaging. It is one of the cheapest and simplest leak detection testing systems. However, this test is destructive and non-reliable over long period of time due to its high dependency on the operator. Vacuum leak detector utilizes the pressure decay testing principle to detect leaks by measuring the vacuum decay using the highly sensitive differential pressure transducer. It is non-destructive and the results are quantifiable.
Both of these methods have many merits. Based on certain defining factors, you could choose between these two-food packaging testing methods for your purpose.
1. Cost-effectiveness and Labor required
The bubble leak testers rely heavily on the operator’s judgment for bubble leak detection. They don’t need the operator to be much trained for performing the leak test. This test is subjective, and operator fatigue can affect the quality of tests over a long period. Bubble leak detection is not suitable if a large number of food packages are being tested.
On the other hand, the vacuum leak testing based on the vacuum decay principle is a quantitative test method. It does not need the operator to judge the result. The SealTick vacuum decay seal integrity testing equipment can quickly test a package in 15 seconds. A straightforward go/no-go result is displayed. If it passes the test, the product can be returned to the production line. The products that fail the test can be discarded or analyzed.
- Waste
The bubble leak detector is destructive, which means products cannot be returned to the production line, even if it passes the test. Therefore, it is not an efficient method and incur huge less when testing high-value products such as milk powder. The non-destructive vacuum decay leak detector will be more suitable in this situation. - Quality control
The vacuum leak detection offers possibility to quantify the testing results which can be stored and retrieved to the PC for analysis and quality control. On the contrary, the bubble leak detector is highly operator reliant and the results are not reliable. It is also more prone to human error when used for long period of operations. Operators also need to manually record the data for control. - Packaging design
In the bubble leak testing systems, it is possible to locate the leak in the packages to analyze the leakage reasons and troubleshoot the issues. On the contrary, vacuum decay leak detection method is not able to pinpoint the leak’s exact location.
The ideal solution for any manufacturers is to use a combination of both methods. On the one hand, the vacuum leak detection method can be used for quick and accurate leakage testing over the production line. If the seal integrity test fails in vacuum decay testing, then the bubble leak detection method can be used to figure out the exact leak location. Based on the leak location, operators can make adjustment to the equipment to correct the problem.