Thanks to the CALIPSOplus European project, Samtack company is analysing at ALBA nanoparticles contained in a new food packaging system that will prevent food oxidation and extend its lifetime.

Cerdanyola del Vallès, 11th October 2018.

We all expect to purchase high quality and fresh food that, even if it has been kept for few days in the supermarket shelf, it still maintains its optimum safety and quality such as well as flavor. Different ambient conditions can modify food quality: moisture can affect the crispness of the product, oxygen can oxidize food with large fat components (e.g. potato chips) and change its taste, while light can degrade vitamins from milk or even remove the aromatic and volatile components from ground coffee and off-taste. Hence, different barriers are required to protect food from moisture, oxygen or light and that's the point where packaging plays a key role. Packaging acts as a barrier and extends the product's shelf life while contributing to diminish the amount of food that is thrown away and avoiding overproduction of food.

Samtack, founded in 1988 and based in Esparreguera (Barcelona), is a manufacturer of glues and adhesives specialized in the sector of graphic arts and packaging. Samtack has developed a new flexible multilayer system, in collaboration with the University of Zaragoza and the Complutense University of Madrid, that contains Selenium nanoparticles and is capable to increase food shelf life.

A packaging system that absorbs free radicals

Free radicals are formed spontaneously from oxygen, moisture and UV radiation and initiate oxidation reactions quickly. As free radicals are very small, they are capable of traversing the plastic layers. The new multilayer system developed by Samtack contains Selenium nanoparticles in one of the layers, and these Selenium nanoparticles are capable to absorb free radicals and therefore to prevent food from oxidation.

However, not all Selenium oxidation states are equally capable to absorb free radicals: while Selenium nanoparticles in its elemental state (Se0) have a high capacity, other oxidation states (SeIV or SeVI) are not so effective.

Synchrotron light for analysing the amount of selenium and its oxidation states

The samples studied at ALBA consisted of different preparations of Selenium nanoparticles plastics laminates and solutions to check the amount of elemental selenium and other selenium oxidation states in each sample. The results obtained provided to Samtack very valuable information to improve the synthesis of the new flexible multilayer system. According to Samtack researchers this information is "very valuable and will help to improve the production of this new flexible packaging".

These measurements were the first experiments performed at ALBA taking advantage of TamaTA funding, a work package from the European project CALIPSOplus (Grant 730872) aimed at approaching SMEs to leading edge techniques from synchrotrons and XFELS to carry out a full experiment or a set of experiments completely funded.