COMPUTERIZED SYSTEM FOR CLOSURE CONTROL OF PACKAGES IN FOOD INDUSTRY

Abstract

Canned food and beverages, currently, comprise a total area of approx. 59 billion cans per year, of which 23 billion cans for food. They represent 18% of total global annual 321 billion cans. In North America, annually, over 32 billion steel cans are produced and sent to the use of packaging [1]. The quality of a food container is determined by its ability to protect the product it contains from chemical deterioration or microbiological spoilage [2]. In the area of industrial applications the problem of closure control for packages used in the food industry is very important as canned products should resist long time (2-3 years), and the consequences of a package defect (content alteration) are not immediately detectable; occurring after a long time and may become extremely dangerous for consumer’s health. One of the can integrity and leakage detection investigation methods is the seam projector measuring system. The computerized system presented was designed for closure control of packages used in the food industry. It contains an integrated system of computing and control which shall be used for a total control of the encasing of the canned product. Thus, there shall be measured the encasing parameters and the dimensional and shape parameters of the packages subject to the sterilization process to find out the defects that may lead in time to the alteration of the content.