Ambient oxygen ingress rate method—an alternative method to Ox‐Tran for measuring oxygen transmission rate of whole packages

The ambient oxygen ingress rate method (AOIR) is an alternative method to OxTran for measuring the oxygen transmission rates (OTR) of whole packages. The objective of the present work was (a) to compare OTR values obtained by the two methods, and (b) to evaluate the use of the AOIR method for measuring OTR at realistic food storage temperatures and humidity levels. The AOIR method gave equal OTR values compared to the Ox-Tran method for the five different types of whole packages used in the experiment, with OTR values in the range 0.06‐1.48 ml O2/day. The repeatability of the AOIR method measured on an HDPE bottle was 2.6% of the measured value in this experiment. This is slightly higher than the general specifications of the Ox-Tran method (1% of reading for packages). However, the AOIR method can be considered to be a reliable, precise and cheap alternative method to the Ox-Tran method for measuring OTR of whole packages. The capacity of the method is also high. The AOIR method showed satisfactory results when comparing OTR for packages tested under realistic food storage conditions covering 23°C/50% relative humidity (RH) and at 4°C/60% RH on the outside, combined with water (100% RH) or dry air inside the packages. Copyright O 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.