Shelf-life prediction: A comparison of methods

The shelf-life assessment of a product is essential to ensuring its safety and integrity. Shelf life is the period of time during which the product retains its required quality level under well-defined storage conditions. To assess the stability of a generic product, a stability test is required: the product is kept under different storage conditions and the performance of characteris-tics used to assess the quality of the product is monitored. Data collected through stability tests are then used to predict the product's shelf life under further storage conditions a applying the calculated degradation rate. Ki-netic models, such as the Arrhenius equation, are usually applied for this purpose. Since humidity can accelerate product degradation, it may be of interest to consider methods which quantify the effect of humidity. This pa-per proposes a comparison of several methods used to predict shelf life: the Bracket method, Eyring method, Peck method, Klinger method and Q-rule. An artificial case study is shown to compare the performance of the applied methods.