Stability in flavoring
Apart from the most stringent cleaning processes, flavorings in the food industry require an equally careful selection of the right material. Here, the various flavors have quite different effects on the stability of the material, such as peach, Fantasy Fruit or orange oil.
Flavoring
Flavoring consists of a large number of chemically different ingredients which means a classification on the basis of its elastomer-destructive potential is therefore much more difficult than with CIP cleaning agents for example. Furthermore, ingredients that are dangerous to elastomers can under certain circumstances increase their effect.
As a general rule, using FKM is recommended in these media, as it shows excellent stability against aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons as well as oils and fats. FKM can also usually be used in media such as essential oils and citrus flavoring, whereas EPDM swells a lot due to a large apolar portion and therefore cannot be used. On the other hand, in various exposure tests, EPDM proves to be superior to FKM so that general recommendations are difficult on the traditional types of polymer .
New: Universal material Fluoroprene® XP Series
As most flavoring also contains the aldehydes, ketones and carbonic acids known to be damaging to elastomers, sometimes there is no other choice than to resort to FDA compliant perfluorelastomers and universally stable sealing materials. A newly developed alternative to this expensive solution can be our new material Fluoroprene® XP which has significantly better chemical stability than an FKM.