Effects of the Number of Carbon Atoms of Flavor Compounds on Diffusion, Permeation and Sorption with Polyethylene Films

Abstract

Sorption, permeation and diffusion of volatile compounds have been studies under a nitrogen stream containing an organic vapor with polyethylene (PE) films with massfraction crystallinity from 0.49 to 0.64 and ethylene vinylacetate copolymer film. The volatile compounds used were n-alkanes, aliphatic ethyl esters, n-aldehydes and n-alcohols containing 4-12 carbon atoms. The semilogarithmic plots of diffusion, permeation, solubility coefficient against the carbon number in any homologous series gave linear relationships up to the compounds with 10 carbon atoms. The slopes of straight lines for sorptions ranged from 0.43 to 0.58. This revealed that the sorption into PE film caused the marked changes in composition of flavor components. Furthermore, the effects of crystallinity and molecular structure of PE on diffusion, permeation and sorption were also discussed.