Résumé
The polymer nanocomposites have become unabatedly popular due to their exceptional properties which results in a plethora of applications including the food packaging. However, safety aspect of these materials is still under debate, specifically in view point of the unknown interactions of nanoparticles with various additives added during the packages processing. For the commonly used polyolefins, the partitioning of additives rather than their diffusivity dictates the extant and extent of these interactions. In this work, the partitioning of various additives between a clay-polymer nanocomposite (CPN) and several food simulants was measured based on a worst-case scenario in viewpoint of the selected polymer and additives. The added value of the CPN in comparison with the pure polymer (LLDPE) was analyzed with regards to their Hansen solubility parameters and log K-log P linearity. Ultimately, an estimation method based on the Flory-Huggins theory was proposed to predict the partition coefficients in CPN.