“True Blue” ISBT-Grade Polybags

for

Vaporized LCO₂ & Feedgas Sampling

Many CO₂ gas suppliers and bottlers routinely use small 1 - 5L polybags for sampling and testing their final product and feedgas streams. Polybags offer many advantages over standard LCO₂ sampling cylinders such as reduced cost, convenience and most importantly, allows your CO₂ gas sample to be easily shipped as “non-hazardous commodity of no commercial value”. This is an important feature for most bottling plant customers that do not have “Hazmat-trained” staff at their facilities. If a serious CO₂ quality upset occurs at these plants, very costly production delays can be experienced if CO₂ samples cannot be quickly “No-HAZ” shipped to a qualified testing lab.

Extremely low limits for Total Sulfur (100 ppb v/v), acetaldehyde (200 ppb v/v) and other critical impurities have recently been established for beverage-grade CO₂, (see ISBT 2001 Guidelines). Because of these level reductions, the quality of many commercial-grade polybags routinely used for sampling has become a serious problem. For example, it has been reported that several critical impurities such as COS, CS₂, acetaldehyde, benzene, toluene and others can be outgassed by “traditional” polybag materials at levels approaching or exceeding the maximum ISBT bev-grade limits! Simple flushing and filling steps have been shown to be ineffective for significantly reducing these slowly outgassed impurities. It is suspected that bag-artifact contamination may be causing many “false-alarm” quality failures in the beverage industry. The consequences are costly production delays, vendor-customer disputes, unnecessary filter change-outs and brand-damaging product recalls.  

To eliminate bag-artifact problems and to properly perform ISBT Sampling Method 1.2 "CARBON DIOXIDE SAMPLING USING INERT, POLYMERIC SAMPLING BAGS" or for CO₂ feedgas testing use, ALI has designed and developed True Blue Polybags^TM. These rugged, ISBT-grade sampling bags are offered in 1L (p/n TBLU-1L) and 5L (p/n TBLU-5L) sizes. Our sampling bags are made of advanced, specially cleaned materials including inert septa, valves, O-rings and a 2 mil thick polymeric film body. ALI bags are manufactured under highly-controlled conditions to ensure their purity for highly demanding applications such as ISBT quality testing.

Every True Blue Polybag^TM lot is analyzed by ALI’s certified laboratory for trace ISBT-target list impurities (e.g. volatile sulfur, oxygenates, hydrocarbons & BTEX) and comes with a lot analysis report. True Blue Polybags^TM are equipped with a rugged, specially cleaned & capped valve stem. These reliable valves have both a septum port and a 3/16" [5 mm] OD stem for convenient sample-filling and testing.

To simplify the bag-filling process, we recommend our 3/16" clean, inert plastic T-fitting accessory (p/n TFIT-316) equipped with a Sulfinert passivated ¼” compression adapter (SHA-316). This special T-fitting is used to connect the sample bag to either a liquid CO₂ vaporizer-pressure regulator unit or a feedgas stream valve. With this clever T-fitting only simple "finger-pressure" is needed for easy,safe sample bag filling. This system greatly minimizes the chance of rapid, uncontrolled bag overfilling and wall-rupture.

A key advantage of a True Blue PolyBags, is that because of the minimal 1-5L amount of gas contained and the low storage pressure (approx. 0 psig, [0 kPa]), your CO₂ sample can be properly and economically shipped by DOT / IATA regulations as a non-hazardous commodity sample of "no-commercial value"! 

 For air-shipments we can also provide 1 gal. shipping cans (p/n HCAN-1GAL) with re-useable ring-seals for gas-tight protection of sample-filled bags. Two, full 1L polybags can be contained within a can. Ring-Sealed shipping cans allow you to fill sampling bags to 80-90% capacity and not have to worry about gas overexpansion in a non-pressurized aircraft compartment. Without a gas-tight outer container, the sample gas will greatly expand during flight, which often causes leakage or catastophic bag rupture-sample loss. Bag damage results in many problems including costly analysis delays and re-sampling activities. Our rugged shipping cans & lids can be re-used many times.

For CO₂ gas producers, breweries & bottling plant customers, we strongly recommend that an “Emergency Kit” of True Blue Polybags^TM, T-Fittings & Shipping Cans be stored on-site for rapid response to any CO₂ Quality Upset

Volume discounts are available. Please contact us if you have any questions.

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