Assessing Artificial Contamination of Polyolefins for Challenge Tests of Recycling Technologies for Food Contact Applications
Sprache des Vortragstitels:
Englisch
Original Tagungtitel:
6th International Conference on Green Chemistry and Sustainable Engineering
Sprache des Tagungstitel:
Englisch
Original Kurzfassung:
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) offers guidelines for challenge tests to determine the decontamination efficiency by processing artificially contaminated material with the respective technology. Nevertheless, there has been no standardization of the contamination and quantification procedures. While a lot of data are already available for polyethylene terephthalate (PET), there is a lack of information on polyolefins (PO) that needs to be investigated. For this study, solid as well as molten virgin PO was contaminated with five surrogates of varying molar mass and polarity as schematically shown in Image 1. The amount of surrogate introduced into the polymer matrix over time at different conditions was determined using a gas chromatographic system equipped with a thermal desorber for a solvent-free extraction of the surrogates. The results highlight the differences in contamination techniques and migration of the contaminants into the polyolefin matrix for challenge tests recommended by EFSA. The increase in contamination temperature did not significantly change the contamination procedure. It has further been demonstrated that injecting liquid surrogates into the PO melt is a fast technique to contaminate the material artificially. Nevertheless, it requires much higher input concentrations than the recommended maximum input contamination of 1000 ppm. This leads to higher chemical consumption and the requirement for safety precautions. Given the variability of contamination techniques and analytical methods, standardization of the challenge test is strongly recommended to ensure the comparability of results and thus ensure consumer safety. With this action, it should be possible to drive forward the transition of the majority of plastic packaging to a circular economy.
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