Migration of additives from polymers into food simulants: numerical solution of a mathematical model taking into account food and polymer interactions

The principle of a computing program describing precisely the migration of additives from a polymer into a food simulant is presented. As six parameters are used to fit the simulant sorption and additive extraction kinetics, the parameters have been determined by independent experiments. Owing to the complicated coupling between the liquid and additive diffusion processes, migration kinetics cannot be obtained by a mathematical resolution of kinetic equations, but they must be calculated by numerical analysis. The method is applied to a UV absorber in polypropylene migrating into glyceryl tripelargonate, a pure triglyceride, of which behaviour and average molecular weight are similar to official fatty food simulants. Properly designed experiments validate the model used to fit the migration kinetics. The possibility of erasing any parameters is also discussed.