Rapid comparison of mineral oils vapor transmission rate through paper and board packaging materials

This paper reports the development of a permeation test method to evaluate the transmission rate of a volatile organic compound, acting as a mineral oil simulant, through paper and plastic packaging materials. The method uses accelerated conditions, whereby the environment on the one side of a substrate is saturated with the vapor of a model organic compound, similar to mineral oil vapor, namely n-heptane. A suitable adsorbent is placed on the other side of the substrate to ensure a constant gradient of vapor pressure by adsorbing the organic vapor as it migrates through the substrate. This mechanism enables the measurement of the heptane vapor transmission rate through food packaging materials, which is an indirect measure of the mineral oil barrier properties. This research demonstrated that barrier-coated paperboards have the ability to behave in the same way as, and often even better than, commercial plastic films toward the migration of mineral oil.