STUDY OF THE BEHAVIOR OF AN EPOXY COATING FOOD CONTACT

Epoxies have been used in the internal coating of cans to endure a long shelf life for canned goods; several types of interactions exist between this kind of packaging (container) and the packed product (contained). This container/contained contact can influence the properties of the packed product, we are interested in this study to contribute to the development of a new formulation in order to prepare an Epoxy coating able to come in contact with foodstuffs, thus our studies based on a selective choice of raw materials that respect the international regulation of food contact, while taking into account the stoichiometric parameters to have a well-cross-linked and resistant polymer. However, the aim of this work is to study the behavior of this developed epoxy coating in contact with different simulant, which represent three categories of food. Within this study, we have characterized the epoxy paint by infra-red, and we have follow the mass variation and the sorption’s kinetics of water, acid acetic, and ethanol in contact with epoxy film by the gravimetric technique, the results allowed us to calculate the diffusion coefficient of each simulant, and then compute the activation energy and thermodynamic parameters. Moreover, the results of the gravimetric method show that the temperature impact the kinetics of diffusion more than the contact time do, the mass transfer depends on the nature of the simulant in contact and on its physic-chemical properties, it concluded also the mass stability of the epoxy coating from 25°C to 40°C.