Dynamic Head Space Analyses of Orange Juice Flavor Compounds and Their Absorption into Packaging Materials

A simple, rapid, sensitive, and reproducible dynamic headspace gas chromatography (DH‐GC) was developed to study the absorption of d‐limonene, α‐pinene, ethyl butyrate, and octanal into laminated polymeric packaging materials containing low‐density polyethylene, polyethylene terephthalate, polyvinylidene chloride, and ethyl‐ene‐vinyl alcohol copolymers. The linear regression lines showed that the flavor compound peak areas were directly proportional to the concentrations of the standard flavor compounds with R 2 ≥ 0.97. The coefficients of variation for the DH‐GC analyses were less than 4%. A test cell was designed to study orange juice flavor absorption into the packaging materials for 28 d at 25 °C. Ethyl butyrate or octanal absorption was not different among the 4 packaging materials ( P > 0.05). Addition of a polyethylene terephthalate and a ethylene‐vinyl alcohol copolymer layer to the packaging materials reduced the d‐limonene and α‐pinene absorption by 20% and 50%, respectively.