Self-Heating & Self-Cooling Packaging Latest Developments & Future Directions

It is a statement of the obvious perhaps that when smart packaging brings cost to the consumer as it clearly does in self-heating and self-cooling forms of packaging it must also bring useful and valued functionality that the consumer is prepared to pay for. For this type of smart packaging the functionality is obvious and it is not difficult to appreciate the usefulness of a self-heating or self-cooling beverage for todays busy consumer, engaged in seemingly permanent on-the-go lifestyle activities, leisure pursuits and perpetual travel. So were left with the issue of how much people are prepared to pay for the convenience of hot or cold drinks or hot food away from home, on the road, at the beach or really anywhere and at anytime. We start by considering the most-promising technologies for creating self-heating and self-cooling packaging, and look at developments to date. Self-Heating - Technologies The only viable form of heat engine for self-heating is an exothermic chemical reaction. A number of options are available with varying degrees of heat output, but the most reactive are also the most dangerous, using potentially toxic chemicals and producing undesirable gaseous by-products. The exothermic chemical reaction of choice for consumer packaging is lime reacted with water because it generates substantial heat output, lime is cheap and readily available, and the by-products of the reaction are environmentally acceptable. An alternative reaction is the hydrolysis of calcium chloride, which has the advantage of producing no reaction by-products, but generates a lower heat output. Self-Heating - Beverages One of the most successful self-heating containers was launched in UK test markets during 2001, as a joint venture between Crown Cork and Seal, Thermotic Developments and Nestl. The product Hot When You Want Nescaf canned coffee heated ~210 ml of coffee, with an occasional shake, to around 40C above ambient in about 3 minutes. The trial was a success and demonstrated that there was a significant market for such a product, but consumers really wanted delivery of a higher volume of beverage. By contrast, in many Mediterranean countries, small quantities of strong espresso coffee drunk at medium warm, not boiling temperatures is frequently the beverage of choice. Caldo Caldo, an Italian development, uses the exothermic reaction between anhydrous calcium chloride and water to meet this need. After the substances are mixed, the consumer shakes the container for 40 seconds so that the hot solution swirls around the aluminium cup containing ~40 ml of beverage, producing a temperature rise of around 23C. This beverage is a niche market product sold across Europe in sports venues, motorway rest areas and many other outlets. Hot drink variants are coffee, cappuccino, chocolate, coffee with grappa and tea with lemon.

At the start of 2005, there has been a major launch of self-heating coffees in the USA, with a range of 10-ounce (~295 ml) Wolfgang Puck gourmet lattes being available through Kroger grocery stores in 32 states. Based on the lime/water reaction, the largely plastic container is portable, fits into a cup holder and heats the coffee to around 60C (145F) in six minutes and keeps it hot for 30 minutes or so. The foam label adds a degree of heat insulation and may be printed in up to six colours.

Examples of self-heating packaging for coffee using the exothermic calcium chloride (left) or lime/water reactions (centre and right).
Source: Packaging Materials & Technologies Ltd

Self-Heating - Food Spin-off technology from the military meals-ready-to-eat (MRE) programmes using highly reactive exothermic reactions based on magnesium oxidation or the reaction between potassium permanganate and glycerine has created a niche but growing market for self-heating food products for emergency services and the outdoors sector. The increasingly convenience-orientated domestic market requires a means to heat all types of food and beverages including high viscosity liquids and solid products, i.e. thick soups, snacks including wraps, fajitas, stuffed pita bread, ready meals, pasta, rice and stews. To date the technologies for self-heating have been confined to lime/water reactions, where heat output is lower but the reaction is safer. But heating times can be long for solid food products since heat is transferred from the heating source to the product purely by conduction. By ensuring excess water is present with the lime/water reaction, a new heat transfer process is being developed by Thermotic Developments - that of direct steam heating. This highly efficient system transfers heat to the product by injecting steam directly

into and through the food. Steam is a very effective medium for transferring energy, with 1g steam delivering around 2KJ of energy. Self-Cooling - Technologies Technology choices boil down to two endothermic chemical reactions and heat pump technology using water vapour as the heat transfer fluid. Endothermic reactions tend to be weak; by contrast water evaporation can be a powerful cooling process, as stepping out of the shower on a cold day demonstrates. The evaporation of 10 ml of water can theoretically cool 330 ml of water by 18C. Self-Cooling - Beverages Notions of self-chilling packaging continue to excite investors and marketers alike, and the brief sounds easy. Design a self-cooling device for beverages such as colas, beer and fruit juice of 330 and 500 ml capacity that will decrease the temperature from the existing value to around 4C in a convenient (say 3 minute) time period. Do this at a moderate on-cost and without compromising existing environmental considerations, safety, portability or recycling and untold riches will be yours. The last 10-15 years has been littered with technological failures in the search for this unfulfilled dream for single serve containers. Even the technically viable heat pump technology has failed, with high costs and lack of reliability as the key problem areas.

Field of opportunities or graveyard of dreams? Examples of the some of the many commercially unsuccessful self-cooling packaging.
Source: Packaging Materials & Technologies Ltd

But heat pump technology is finding commercial success in Europe for party keg sizes of beer. The German CS-Metallbau Company has developed the worlds first selfcooling refillable keg using zeolite heat pump technology. The technology is licensed to Cool-System Bev. GmbH and is being used by Germanys Tucher Bru brewery and many other brewers for multi-litre take home kegs of beer in refillable stainless steel kegs. Also commercial in Italy and elsewhere is the sister product of Caldo Caldo, Freddo Freddo which employs the endothermic reaction between sodium thiosulphate pentahydrate and water. Self-Heating & Self-Cooling Smart Packaging Future Outlook Both self-heating and self-cooling containers in the future are likely to be largely made from plastics for lightness and portability, with metal only used in critical areas requiring high thermal conduction or stiffness. For self-heating packaging, technical developments are expected to continue with the focus being on lime/water and calcium chloride/water chemical reactions with the

provision of a temperature control feedback system so the devices create a maximum temperature for the drink regardless of the ambient temperature. Thermochromic temperature labels will be incorporated to indicate when a product is hot. Costs will come down and product quality will go up, so the future is promising for beverages, and for higher quality food products using direct steam heating. The quest for the cost-effective, single-serve self-cooling beverage container will continue, and it is predicted that the engineering and technology issues associated with the manufacture of such devices will be mastered by 2010. This will require the development of miniaturised drop-in modules using heat pump technology where the heat produced inside the beverage container can be absorbed by phase change materials. By then the global market for beverage containers is estimated to be approximately 300 billion per year and growing at about 3-5 percent per year. The market penetration of the self-cooling container as forecasted by prominent market research organizations and beverage companies, would likely increase to about 5% of total container consumption while the unit price of the self-cooling container is expected to fall to around 20-25 cents. If this happens, world market share of the self-cooling container could be around 15 billion per year.