Preliminary study on the selection of self-heating elements in self-heating pad / Hidayatul Husna Hisham

Self-heating food packaging consists of a heating pad and food itself which the food warmer provided to help reheat the ready to eat meals. The food warmer or heat pack is an active module with an ability to produce heat without external heat sources which called an exothermic reaction process. The most popular application of this technology is Kembara food pack. This innovation really suitable and convenient during travel as it will help to re-heat the food easily and safe to eat within a few minutes only. Therefore, this study aimed to discover the best chemical composition of Calcium Oxide with Sodium Chloride to develop a self-heating pack for re-heating purpose of food. The most suitable characteristics of the heating pack is a reaction that can achieve higher final temperature with lower duration to rise and longest duration sustain at the highest temperature. The reaction of Calcium Oxide and Sodium Chloride were activated with 25 ml, 30ml, 40ml, 50ml, 100ml, 120ml and 200ml of water with each of temperature reaction occur was recorded. The result in this study indicated that the combination of 70g of Calcium Oxide with 10g NaCl in 100 ml of water exhibited the highest temperature 105℃ with the time sustained at highest temperature is 1 minute and took about 5 minute to rise the highest temperature. Meanwhile, the lowest temperature was recorded is 28°C and it took around 20 minutes to reach the temperature when 10g of calcium oxide and 15g of sodium chloride were combined with 25 ml of water.