Barrier and sensory properties of materials
Certech studies the behaviour of materials at every moment of their life cycle.
These studies are focused on the understanding of migration, permeability, interactions and sorption between a plastic packaging and its content (food, cosmetics, pharmaceutical and automobile industry).
Several parameters have to be taken into account for the choice of a material for packaging:
- The materials must comply with specific properties, since they are at the interface between an external environment and a protected product.
- Components may be released by the packaging material and these can modify the final properties of the product (change of flavour or odour, loss of organoleptic and nutritional properties, loss of permeability, contaminations, bacteriological issues…)
Certech provides its expertise for :
- The analysis of NIAS chemicals (Non-Intentionally Added Substances)
- The investigation of the origin of flavours and odours defaults, through the correlation of sensorial and chemical analyses. Certech service range includes the identification and quantification of volatiles organic components (VOC = solvents, residual monomers, noticeable chemicals such as acetaldehyde which is emitted by PET …), and of chemicals resulting from the degradation of resins or additives
- The impact of the experimental conditions during the synthesis or the manufacturing, as well as post-treatment steps (coating, sterilisation …), storage time and the possible interactions with the product are investigated
- The research on material permeability properties, using screening tests as well as adapted tests regarding the evaluation of barrier properties against odours, specific gases and VOCs
- The analysis of heavy metals in packaging material
- The development of low-odour materials, with no impact on the packaged goods
- The compounding of barrier materials
