Migration of antimicrobial agents from starch-based films into a food simulant

The migration of antimicrobial (AM) agents carvacrol, thymol and linalool from heat pressed and coated starch-based packaging films into isooctane was investigated and the release of the agents consistently obeyed first-order kinetics. When the test temperature was increased from 15 to 35 degrees C, the diffusion coefficients increased from 6.3 x 10(-13) to 12.9 x 10(-13) m(-2) s(-1) for carvacrol, from 12.0 x 10(-13) to 29.7 x 10(-13) m(-2) s(-1) for thymol and from 9.5 x 10(-13) to 19.0 x 10(-13) m(-2) s(-1) for linalool from the heat pressed starch-based films. The diffusion coefficients of carvacrol, thymol and linalool from coated starch-based films containing increased from 2.2 x 10(-13) to 8.7 x 10(-13) m(-2) s(-1), from 2.7 x 10(-13) to 6.1 x 10(-13) m(-2) s(-1) and from 5.1 x 10(-13) to 9.4 X 10(-13) m(-2) s(-1) respectively between 15 and 35 degrees C. The activation energies for the migration of carvacrol, thymol and linalool from the heat pressed films were 26.2, 33.6 and 25.5 kJ mol(-1) respectively and those for the migration from the coated systems were 31.3, 3.0 and 22.5 kJ mol(-1) respectively. The results suggest that the AM agents show a potential for use as AM packaging materials. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.