Migration of photoinitiators from paper to fatty food simulants: experimental studies and model application

ABSTRACT

The migration of five different photoinitiators from kraft paper to two fatty food simulants, Tenax^® and 95% ethanol, was investigated under different conditions. The effects of temperature and storage time, as well as the physicochemical properties of the photoinitiators on migration, were discussed. Mathematical models based on Fick’s second law generated from two cases, single- and two-side contacts, were applied to predict the migration behaviour from the paper to the food simulants. The partition coefficients estimated from the model decreased with temperature. The diffusion coefficients of the selected photoinitiators from the paper ranged from 1.55 × 10^–10 to 7.54 × 10^–9 cm² s⁻¹ for Tenax and from 2.79 × 10^–9 to 8.03 × 10^–8 cm² s⁻¹ for 95% ethanol. The results indicate that the applied model can predict the migration of photoinitiators in the initial short period before equilibrium, and the migration from paper to Tenax through a single-side contact demonstrated an especially high concordance.

KEYWORDS:

• Migration
• food packing paper
• food safety
• model

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China [grant number 2012BAD29B05].