Workshop & brainstorming 26 October 2012 Het Pand (Gent) Development of a wireless sensor platform for quality control in the cold chain of the future NVC Pasteur Seminar: consortium Verpakken meeting voor 5-6 April de 2011 gekoelde Antwerp supply chain
RFID adoption in the logistic cool chain Present 2010-2015 >> 2015 Bulk-management Multi-item management Item management > 1 $ Price per tag < 1 c$ # of items to be tagged
Supply chain monitoring of perishables Why monitor? Accurately determine shelf life Optimise logistic chain and retail management Ensure health safety of monitored products Liability in distribution-chain (e.g. damage) What to monitor? Temperature history is most important Other parameters are highly product-dependent Humidity (dried food (tea) or powder (flour), also pharmaceuticals) ph (meat, fish and dairy products) O 2 and CO 2 (MAP-products) Ethylene (fruits and flowers) NVC Pasteur Seminar: consortium Verpakken meeting voor 5-6 April de 2011 gekoelde Antwerp supply chain
Aim of the Pasteur project research and development towards a wireless sensor tag which enables monitoring the environmental conditions of perishables in the cold chain
Selected application case: Fruit Cold chain The quality of fruits (e.g. taste, color, texture, firmness, occurrence of defects) can be related to the environmental conditions during its transport and storage in the cold chain
Application cases Meat based products Carcasses Packed ph ph T T O2 CO2 Tomatoes, ornamentals T RH Plant based products Tomatoes, apples T RH O2 CO2 Avocado, strawberry T RH O2 CO2 C 2 H 4 Processed products Carbonated drinks Convenience T T O2 CO2 RH O2 CO2
Pasteur RFID - sensor tag
Pasteur RFID - sensor tag
Pasteur RFID - sensor tag
MIST sensor chip 200um RH CO2 AM GDS-View (x64) (version 7.6.3) MIST1431.gds - icl_mist_ic - (-323.234µm, 1964.525µm)-(2287.657µm, -1.985µm) nlv11759 2011/09/16 15:22:48 Sensor response to relative humidity
Printed battery development First printed batteries delivered Lateral and stacked concepts Sufficient (peak) energy at RT Battery on tag (+ printed antenna) Zinc Manganese Substrate Electrolyte +
Battery status 1 year self-discharge study 3rd generation Prelonic battery - Capacity doubled - Self discharge time also doubled No increase in internal leakage However, the battery capacity is still too low to serve the application case
Other battery options CR2025: 2-3.1V 165mAh ~1.5 years life-time (assuming ~0.01mA average consumption) 0.9-1.5V & ~12mAh ~45days life-time 55x47x0.5mm
PCB version of the sensor tag
Life Cycle of a smart tag Storage Parameterization Deployment - Activation Manufacturing Disposal Removal Scanning Transport - Storage
Read-out locations Grower Auction Distribution center Disadvantage: no real-time feed-back possible!!
Real-time monitoring of the cold chain GSM and/or satellite
Conclusions & Outlook The benefits of a smart sensor tag can be found on all places of the supply chain, between producer and distributor and between retailer and end-customer. It fulfils a direct need from the market, since consumers (governments and agencies) put more and more strict rules and guidelines to the quality of products. However at the moment, it is unclear who is willing to pay for the investment to implement the Pasteur solution into the different cold chains Most probably, the high-end markets and pharma will be the early adopters
Technology chain and the Pasteur partners Application Solutions Systems (Tags, Readers, Software) Components (Thin Film Batteries, ICs, Antenna substrates,..) ) Tools and Tools Materials and Materials (Zn powder, polymer foils, molding (Zn powder, polymer foils, molding compounds, sensing materials, silicon compounds, sensing materials,.) wafers, lithography tools,.)