Determination of High Temperature Partition Coefficients Cardboard/Air for Model Semi Volatile Compounds in Cardboards Used for Food Packaging

Due to the requirements of modern life, where the time to eat is scarce, there is nowadays a noticeable increasing of pre-cooked products where foods are heated at high temperatures in the same packaging (microwave, heat and eat,...). Although several cardboard-based packagings have been specifically designed for these uses, the structural complexity of cardboard itself makes possible that part of their components could be released from the matrix in the severe heating conditions. Therefore, and in addition to the normal migration process which requires direct food-cardboard contact, it is also possible that the compounds released from the cardboard matrix could reach the surrounding inner atmosphere of the packaging and later contaminate the food. The higher the concentration in air, the higher is the contamination probability. A convenient evaluation way of this process consists of the calculation of partition coefficients cardboard/air. In this work, a systematic study for the determination of partition coefficients cardboard/air has been carried out with a group of semi volatile model compounds with different polarity, structure and boiling points. In a first part, a simple procedure for the analysis consisting of automatic headspace-gas chromatography has been developed. In order to calculate correlations, different cardboards, temperatures and times have been tested.