(707g) Assessment of Commercially Available Packaging Films for Hot Sauce Using Contact Angle Analysis Combined with Principal Component Analysis

The aggressive nature of hot sauces prevents its long-term storage in many commercially-available packaging films. The goal of this work is to monitor changes in surface properties, focused on surface energy and wettability, of packaging films during exposure to hot sauce. Two monolayer and six multilayer packaging films were assessed during immersion in hot sauce at elevated temperature to accelerate aging for up to 12 weeks. Changes in contact angles and surface energies were measures of surface degradation of the films. Principal component analysis (PCA) was carried out based on these data to reduce the dimensionality and discern the most influential variables in the dataset. For PCA, contact angle measurements as well as calculated surface energies were inputs. Cluster analysis of the results of PCA led to separate the packaging films into two groups (Cluster 1 & Cluster 2), with different extents/types of surface degradative phenomena. Cluster 1 films have higher total surface energy compared to Cluster 2 films. Cluster 1 films exhibited greater changes in the values of principal components 1 and 2 during long-term exposure to hot sauce, which is representative of the more stable surface properties of Cluster 2 films over time. Combined, these results suggest that Cluster 2 films may perform better as hot sauce packaging materials. These types of approaches may also be appropriate for screening of films for other packaging applications.