By Bill Bregar
SENIOR STAFF REPORTER
Published: August 13, 2014 9:45 am ET
Agr International has rolled out an update to its PPT3000 high-speed bottle testing equipment: M-RULE, a shelf-life model that provides accurate estimates of a product’s shelf life.
A key feature: The ability to directly enter wall thickness information. Along with other improvements, this provides a more accurate estimate of shelf life on current bottle production.
“We made improvements to the PPT3000 in the way that we define material utilization. This is intended to give the user a better understanding of how shelf life performance relates to material utilization on a given bottle design,” said Sudha Christy, Agr’s product manager for the PPT3000.
Mark Rule, president of container sciences, the PPT3000, using M-RULE, gives a more consistent, accurate representation of shelf life measurement than results derived from real-time, long-term tests.
In less than 60 seconds, pressure and volume expansion data on a bottle is captured and analyzed. This information is then used to map material utilization in relation to shelf life of the individual bottle. Agr equipment creates a specific “fingerprint” that retains the recipe for shelf-life testing for a particular bottle design.
M-RULE is a web-based predictive tool that operates by integrating fundamentals of permeation with physical date for the component materials and other related data that impacts the permeability of a container.
The results are displayed on the PPT3000’s display screen, along with pressure and expansion data.
Agr International is in Butler, Pa. | 
