Simulation study ε-Caprolactam monomer and metallic elements migration from irradiated polymeric packaging into food stimulants

For decades migration study of chemical compounds from packaging into food, such as metals, residual monomers and additives, is a very important issue, concerning public health and minimize chemical contamination. In this work, it was done irradiations of packagings taken in contact with food simulant, and it was studied this migration through a mathematical model of the diffusion process, compiled in a computational simulation method in order to study the microscopic behavior of migration of metallic elements cadmium, chromium, antimony and cobalt, present in metallic plastics from dairy product packagings, and also the migration of - caprolactam monomer, present in nylon polymeric plastics used for package meat stuffs, to the food simulant acetic acid 3%. The results from simulations of the migration of -caprolactam monomer were compared with experimental results obtained from high resolution gas chromatography (HRGC) measurements, and the simulation of metallic elements migration were compared with the neutron activation analysis measurements (NAA). These experimental results were performed and kindly informed by another research groups, partners in this project. The food packaging system was discretized in one-dimension space and in time and the partial differential equation that defines the diffusive process, the second 'Fick's law', together with an equation of Arrhenius type dealing with the thermal influence, were solved using finite differences. The final step of the resolution was a tridiagonal linear system, solved using the Thomas algorithm. It was studied, and in some cases even foreseen, experimental quantities, like the diffusion coefficient, activation energy and concentration profile of migrant compounds, allowing the understanding of the diffusion process and the quantitative estimate of the migration of such compounds under ionizing radiation influence. Variation on the initial concentration levels (C0) of the monomer inside the packaging happens. Simulations showed that the migration process strongly depends on the initial concentration profile and, in spite of the absence of a formal validation method, the simulation results showed excellent agreement with several experimental results obtained from different analytical techniques. This simulator is an interesting tool for future studies on ionizing radiation influence in food-packaging systems. (author)