Combined chromatographic and mass spectrometric toolbox for fingerprinting migration from PET tray during microwave heating.

A combined chromatographic and mass spectrometric toolbox was utilized to determine the interactions between poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) food packaging and different food simulants during microwave heating. Overall and specific migration was determined by combining weight loss measurements with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS). This allowed mapping of low molecular weight migrants in the molecular range up to 2000 g/mol. Microwave heating caused significantly faster migration of cyclic oligomers into ethanol and isooctane as compared to migration during conventional heating at the same temperature. This effect was more significant at lower temperature at which diffusion rates are generally lower. It was also shown that transesterification took place between PET and ethanol during microwave heating, leading to formation of diethyl terephthalate. The detected migrants included cyclic oligomers from dimer to hexamer, in most cases containing extra ethylene glycol units, and oxidized Irgafos 168. ESI-MS combined with CID MS-MS was an excellent tool for structural interpretation of the nonvolatile compounds migrating to the food simulants. The overall migration was below the overall migration limit of 10 mg/dm(2) set by the European commission after 4 h of microwave heating at 100 °C in all studied food simulants.

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