Mass transfer and related shelf life assessment is an important issue in the beverage industry. Product
change due to mass transfer is at stake and, with it, its consumer value and consideration.
Carbonation loss takes place at the product/package interface, and to the environment through the
package itself. In this paper a joint experimental/computational approach has been exploited: the CO2
loss through the polyethylene terephthalate barrier has been computed by means of a multidimensional
finite element code, while actual measurements have been carried out to validate the computations.
Residual carbonation histories are validated and presented for a variety of thermal regimes and for two
different bottles carrying the same capacity. The paper highlights on the combination of bottle weight,
initial carbonation and storage temperature, indicating the operational set for the longest shelf life within
the explored cases. Lighter bottles can be used with no inference on shelf life, while the carbonic loss
depends non-linearly on initial carbonation and temperature increment. The associated concentration
maps help infer on the importance of polyethylene terephthalate thickness uniformity.
It is then demonstrated that the model carries the flexibility of a general tool, applicable to any carbonated
beverage at any storage condition.