Canning

By: G. R. P. K. Perera, CoT, Kandy

History
The tin can was patented in 1810 by the English inventor Peter Durand, based on experimental
work by the Frenchman Nicolas Appert. He did not produce any food cans himself, but sold his
patent to two other Englishmen, Bryan Donkin and John Hall, who set up a commercial canning
factory, and by 1813 were producing their first canned goods for the British Army.
Early cans were sealed with lead soldering, which has led to lead poisoning. Famously, in the
1845 Arctic expedition of Sir John Franklin, crew members suffered from severe lead poisoning
after three years of eating canned food.
In 1901, the American Can Company was founded which, at the time, produced 90% of United
States tin cans.[1]

[edit] Description

A selection of tins
Most cans have identical and parallel round tops and bottoms with vertical sides. However,
where the small volume to be contained and/or the shape of the contents suggests it, the top and
bottom may be rounded-corner rectangles or ovals. Other contents may justify a can that is
overall somewhat conical in shape.
The fabrication of most cans results in at least one "rim", a narrow ring whose outside diameter
is slightly larger than that of the rest of the can. The flat surfaces of rimmed cans are recessed
from the edge of any rim (toward the middle of the can) by about the width of the rim; the inside
diameter of a rim, adjacent to this recessed surface, is slightly smaller than the inside diameter of
the rest of the can.

Three-piece can construction results in top and bottom "rim"; in two-piece construction, one
piece is a flat top and the other a cup-shaped piece that combines the (at least roughly)
cylindrical wall and the round base; the transition between the wall and base is usually somewhat
gradual. Such cans have a single rim at the top.
In the mid-20th century, a few milk products were packaged in nearly rimless cans, reflecting
different construction; in this case, one flat surface had a hole (for filling the nearly complete
can) that was sealed after filling with a quickly solidifying drop of molten solder. Concern arose
that the milk contained unsafe levels of lead leached from this solder plug.

[edit] Materials

No cans currently in wide use are composed primarily or wholly of tin; that term rather reflects
the near-exclusive use in cans, until the second half of the 20th century, of tinplate steel, which
combined the physical strength and relatively low price of steel with the corrosion resistance of
tin.
Use of aluminium in cans began in 1957.[2] Aluminium is less costly than tin-plated steel but
offers the same resistance to corrosion in addition to greater malleability, resulting in ease of
manufacture; this gave rise to the two-piece can, where all but the top of the can is simply
stamped out of a single piece of aluminium, rather than laboriously constructed from two pieces
of steel. Often the top is tin-plated steel and the rest of the can aluminium.
A can usually has a printed paper or plastic label glued to the outside of the curved surface,
indicating its contents. Some labels contain additional information, such as recipes, on the
reverse side. A label can also be printed directly onto the metal.

In modern times, the majority of food cans in the UK[3] have been lined with a plastic coating
containing bisphenol A (BPA). The leeching of BPA into the can's contents is currently (as of
early 2010) being investigated as a potential health hazard.

[edit] Standard sizes

Nescaf coffee tin

Can shapes are usually one of two shapes that maximize the volume and minimize the material,
the "soup tin" or the "tuna tin." Walls are often stiffened with ribs, especially on larger cans, to
help the can resist dents that can cause seams to split.
Can sizes in the United States have an assortment of designations and sizes. For example, size
7/8 contains one serving of half a cup with an estimated weight of 4 ounces; size 1 "picnic" has
two or three servings totalling one and a quarter cups with an estimated weight of 10 ounces;
size 303 has four servings totalling 2 cups weighing 15 ounces; and size 10 cans, most widely
used by food services selling to cafeterias and restaurants, have twenty-five servings totaling 13
cups with an estimated weight of 103 ounces (size of a roughly 3 pound coffee can). These are
all "U.S. customary" cups, and not equivalent to the former Imperial standard of the British
Empire or the later Commonwealth.
In the United States, cook books will sometimes reference cans by size. These sizes are currently
published by the Can Manufacturers Institute and may be expressed in three-digit numbers, as
measured in whole and sixteenths of an inch for the container's nominal outside dimensions: a
307 x 512 would thus measure 3 and 7/16" in diameter by 5 and 3/4" (12/16") in height. Notice
that this is not in millimetres. Older can numbers are often expressed as single digits, their
contents being calculated for room-temperature water as approximately eleven ounces (#1
"picnic" can), twenty ounces (#2), thirty-two ounces (#3) fifty-eight ounces (#5) and onehundred-ten ounces (#10 "coffee" can).[4]

In countries and regions that use the metric system of measures, most tins are made in 250, 500,
750 ml (millilitre) and 1 L (litre) sizes (250 ml is approximately 1 cup or 8 ounces). In situations
where products from the USA have been repackaged for sale in such countries, it is common to
have odd sizes such as 3.89 L (1 USA gallon), 1.89 L (1/2 USA gallon), and 946 ml (USA 2 pints
/ 1 quart).
In Australia, cans are usually measured by net weight. A standard size tin can is roughly 400g;
however, the weight can vary between 385g and 425g, depending on the density of the contents.
The smaller half sized can is roughly 200g; it can vary between 170g and 225g.

[edit] Fabrication of cans

Rimmed-can construction necessarily has three phases:
1. Joining the bottom and wall (or forming the cup-shaped piece, for a two-piece can)
2. Filling the can with content
3. Joining the wall and top.
Rims are crucial to the joining of the wall to a top or bottom surface. An extremely tight fit
between the pieces must be accomplished to prevent leakage; the process of accomplishing this
radically deforms small areas of the parts. Part of the tube that forms the wall is bent, almost at
its end, turning outward through 90 degrees, and then bent further, toward the middle of the tube,
until it is parallel to the rest of the tube, a total bend of 180 degrees.
The outer edge of the flat piece is bent against this toward the middle of the tubular wall, until
parallel with the wall, turning inward through 90 degrees. The edge of bent portion is bent
further through another 90 degrees, inward now toward the axis of the tube and parallel to the
main portion of the flat piece, making a total bend of 180 degrees. It is bent far enough inward
that its circular edge is now slightly smaller in diameter than the edge of the tube. Bending it yet
further, until it is parallel with the tube's axis, gives it a total bend of 270 degrees. Outward from
the axis of the tube, the first surface is the unbent portion of the tube.
Slightly further out is a narrow portion of the top, including its edge. The outward-bent portion
of the tube, including its edge, is slightly further out. Furthest out is the 90-degree-bent portion
of the flat surface.
The combined interacting forces, as the portion of the flat surface adjacent to the interior of the
tube is indented toward the middle of the tube and then outward away from the axis of the tube,
and the other bent portions of the flat piece and the tube are all forced toward the axis of the
tube, drives these five thicknesses of metal against each other from inside and out, forming a
"dry" joint so tight that welding or solder is not needed to strengthen or seal it.

Manufacturing information on the bottom of cans.

Inside of a tin can.

[edit] Opening cans

The first tin cans were heavy-weight containers that required ingenuity to open, using knives,
chisels or even rocks. Not until cans started using thinner metal about 50 years later were any
dedicated can openers developed.
While beverage cans or cans of liquids such as soup merely need to be punctured to remove the
product, solid or semisolid contents require access which is generally gained by removing the top
(or bottom) of the can. Although this can be accomplished by brute force using something like a
large, heavy knife, many more convenient can openers have been devised and marketed.
Some cans, such as those used for sardines, have a lid which is specially scored so that the metal
can be broken apart by the leverage of winding it around a slotted church key.
The advent of pull tabs in beverage cans spread to the canning of various food products, such as
pet food or nuts (and non-food products such as oil cans and tennis balls), allowing the
convenience of opening without need for any tools or implements.

A simple butterfly can opener.

A can opener.

Detail on a can opener.

[edit] Recycling
Steel from cans and other sources is the most recycled packaging material.[5] Around 65% of steel
cans are recycled.[6] In the US, 63% of steel cans are recycled, compared to 52% of aluminium
cans.[7]

[edit] Dissolution of the tin coating into the food

Although tin is corrosion resistant, acidic food like fruits and vegetables can cause corrosion of
the tin layer. Nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea have been reported after ingesting canned food
containing 200 mg/kg of tin.[8] A study showed that 99.5% of tested cans contain below
200 mg/kg of tin.[9]