Organoleptic Evaluations of Extrusion Coating LDPE-Grades by Analytical Measurements as Compared to Odour/Taste-Rankings, 1993 Polymers, Laminations & Coatings Conference Proceedings

Egbert W. Kuijk, Theo P.J. Warnar

In liquid packaging markets, organoleptic neutrality is an imperative quality-demand for packaging materials; this certainly holds for extrusion coating LDPE-grades, when applied as material for the inner layer of cardboard-aluminium-PE-laminates for aseptic liquid packaging. In order to test the organoleptic quality of the LDPE, taste panel-tests are frequently used. In this paper, attempts to find correlations between organoleptic results and chemical-analytical measurements such as FT-IR and GC-MS are reported, whereby cast films were used as test-samples. It is concluded from the results that the measured oxidation indices of the films and the factors [wax content x oxidation index of wax] correlate reasonably well with the organoleptic results. Also CC-MS measurements of volatile components in the cast films gave a good general indication of the taste-levels of the cast films. Fine-tuning of the interpretation of the analytical results however, will be necessary to enable their use as routine organoleptic quality-measurements.