It is necessary to develop corrugated medium food packaging, which is suitable for highly humid environments, to meet the demands of cold chain logistics. In this paper, we investigated the influence of the transverse ring crush index of different environmental factors of corrugated medium and the failure mechanisms during cold chain transportation. After freeze-thaw treatment of corrugated medium, XRD and DP showed a decrease in crystallinity and polymerization of 3.47 and 7.83%, respectively. Also, the FT-IR spectra of the paper showed that the number of intermolecular hydrogen bonds decreased by about 3.00% after freezing. SEM and XRD showed CaCO3 precipitation on the paper surface and a 26.01% increase in pore size. This study would be beneficial in further expanding the applications of cellulose-based paperboard cold chain transportation.
© 2023 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society.