Determination of hydrophobic degree of paper packaging materials by a tracer-assisted headspace gas chromatography

Abstract The present work reports on a method for the determination of hydrophobic degree of paper packaging material by tracer-assisted headspace gas chromatography. The method was based on adding 40 μL of methanol-water drop on the paper surface for 20 s. After removing the excess water by turning the sample vertically, the sample is placed in a vial and the amount of residual tracer attached on the material surface was accurately quantified by full evaporation headspace gas chromatography. The results show that the present method has a good precision (less than 4.1 %). The present method is simple and accurate and it can be an efficient tool for testing the hydrophobic degree of paper packaging material in batch.