Studies on the Migration behavior of various Printing Ink solvents of plastic films

플라스틱 필름에 대한 유기 용매의 전이 특성에 관한 연구

The increasing use of plastics in food packaging materials has led to the issue of food-packaging mutual interactions from residues in the plastics. Plastic films are commonly printed by using solvent-based ink to decorate the packaged food for consumer attention. However, the residual solvents can not be completely removed and they can migrate into the contained food which lead to undesirable off-flavors. Partitioning (Kp) of printing ink solvents was studied in two types of plastic films with different chemical structure and polarity. At $25^{\circ}C$, Kp of toluene is higher than that of isopropanol in PP, but isopropanol showed higher Kp value than toluene in EVOH. This showed that polarity had a significant effect on the partitioning of printing ink solvents into the plastic films. Printing solvents had a higher affinity to the polymer with similar polarity than it did to the different one.