The Next Breakthrough in Thermal Protection?

Cold Chain IQ speaks to Jamie Chasteen, Sr. Product Manager of Cold Chain Technologies, Inc on the subject of next generation phase change materials and how these will impact the temperature control containers of the future.

There has been a lot of intrigue generated about your development of gelled Phase Change Material (PCM). What do you think is driving this buzz?

For several years the industry has benefitted immensely from the emergence of phase change materials (PCMs). These refrigerants have allowed us to design thermal shipping systems that perform better while simultaneously being smaller, lighter, and having a lower total cost when compared to long-established all-water based systems.

Traditional PCMs however are liquid when thawed and are unable to maintain a shape-stable form. This limits how they are designed in package applications. Additionally, these organic PCMs have a much lower viscosity than water-based refrigerants, making them more difficult to seal in a package such as with a bottle cap seal or a flexible PCM brick or mat seal. Similarly, if punctured or cut, the liquid PCMs can escape from the package, limiting their overall utility.

This is what drove us to develop the Koolit® Advanced PCM Gel. The patented process behind the Koolit Advanced PCM gel is a major step forward for the industry offering:

1. I mproved physical and thermal performance. Liquid PCM does not fill 100% to the top of a bottle, leaving a weak spot on the top edge of the payload. This can be compensated by adding more PCM or by adding more insulation, both inefficient and costly methods. Additionally, plastic bottle walls are thermally inefficient. Gelled PCM allows for coverage of a payload exactly where it is needed without the negative thermal effects or added cost and weight of a liquid PCM bottle.

2. Gelled PCMs maintains their shape. It allows us to design with vertical coverage, using a uniformly thick layer of PCM. We design with the right amount of PCM, creating the most effective thermal protection while reducing the total amount of PCM. This allows us to design more efficient shipping systems that are lighter, smaller, and reduce cost for the shipper.

3. Gelled PCMs provide modularity in return re-use systems. We pioneered the modular approach (singular components fitting multiple size applications) with great success in our KoolTemp® GTS Excel and KoolTemp® GTS Extreme product families several years ago. The advent of gelled PCM allows us to apply the same modular product approach to robust re-usable systems in a way not possible with plastic bottles. Koolit Advanced Gel PCM can fold on itself and around the corners of a payload. We can now develop very efficient modular designs that utilize a single PCM, with minimal pack-out touches, over a large range of shipper sizes and durations. This is exactly what life science companies are demanding.

With so many benefits to a gelled PCM why has the industry not implemented it sooner?

Gelling of PCM has long been an objective by cold chain packaging suppliers. The engineering challenges of solidifying non-water organic based PCMs while maintaining the thermal characteristics required by our industry are vast. Many companies have attempted (and failed) to gel PCMs for use in the life science packaging market. Gelling agents are often accompanied by two undesirable effects: a dramatic lowering of the available latent heat and a freeze point depression of the phase change temperature .Both of these properties are crucial to thermal packaging design. Two other undesirable characteristics that often accompany the addition of gelling agents are hysteresis, or changing thermal characteristics with each freeze/thaw cycle, and syneresis, or the expulsion of liquid from the gel over time or after multiple freeze/thaw cycles. We are the first company to create a shape-stable PCM without mal-effect to the final product for use in thermal packaging for life science.

Not to be overlooked is the process put in place to manufacture these material. Previous industry attempts to mass-commercialize shape stable PCMs have not been successful given the complexity, repeatability, quality and ultimately cost associated with processing. We have been able to create an efficient and robust manufacturing process that provides repeatability and high quality while keeping the costs in check. Both the creation of the patent pending Koolit Advanced PCM Gel material itself and the manufacturing process to commercialize it have been clear breakthroughs for our industry.

Will gelled PCM lead to any completely new packaging solutions previously not possible with liquid PCM?

Yes. Most of what I’ve described has pertained to significant incremental improvements to existing types of packaging systems. Koolit Advanced PCM Gel will also allow us to create totally new solutions for the market that we could not consider with liquid PCMs in bottles or flexible packaging. The first such product is just now hitting the market. The KoolTemp® GTS Enshield is the industry’s first PCM pallet cover. This new system will shift what’s possible in the shipment of bulk temperature sensitive products. The freight benefits of utilizing just a pallet cover are extremely high. Until now, the tradeoff had been limited performance with insulation only protection. The GTS Enshield will incorporate the superior thermal protection of Koolit Advanced PCM Gel in combination with our KoolTemp® Thermal Covers greatly altering bulk shipment designs and reducing the total cost per dose of therapy distributed.

Any final remarks?

Five years ago, our executive team made a significant investment in time and resources to achieve gelled PCM technology. Today, we could not be more delighted to see this amazing industry advancement actually take shape and reach commercialization. It’s a very exciting time.