Effect of processing method on migration of antioxidant from HDPE packaging into a fatty food simulant in terms of crystallinity

Migration of additives from plastic packaging into food products is generally considered to be affected by polymer crystallinity. In the present work, migration of Irganox 1010 from high density polyethylene into a fatty food simulant (ethanol 95%) was studied for samples prepared with different percent crystallinities. For this purpose, 2 different processing techniques, injection and compression molding, were used, and the preparation conditions were changed to obtain high density polyethylene samples with crystallinities in the range of 50 to 70%. Migration analysis was carried out at 121°C for 2 hours, and then at 40°C for 238 hours using high performance liquid chromatography. In general, the injection molded specimens had lower crystallinity and higher overall migration than the compression molded ones. A similar trend for both injection and compression molded samples was observed indicating that the overall migration was a function of crystallinity degree. However, the specific migration rates of Irganox 1010 especially before 50 hours were found to be different for the 2 processing methods because of dissimilar morphologies. Theoretical modeling based on Fickian diffusion was applied to give more insights into the involved processes during specific migration. The interaction of the food simulant with the polymer was taken into account considering the food sorption into the polymer. By fitting the model on experimental data, it was possible to obtain the model parameters such as partition coefficients (K) and the swelling constant (B) as a function of sample crystallinity.