One-dimensional and comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatographic approaches for the characterization of post-consumer recycled plastic materials.

In September 2022, the European Commission published its new regulation on recycled plastic materials for food contact. It allows newly developed, non-authorized technologies and approaches, or so-called novel technologies, to be deployed in the field to generate the data needed for establishing regulatory and/or fit for purpose processes. The data shall be generated by using suitable methods, but the regulation does not give a more detailed description on those. In this study, commercially purchased buckets made of post-consumer recycled polypropylene were screened, using a number of different analytical approaches. Sample preparation methods, analysis techniques, and the data and information generated were compared. The results clearly demonstrate the need for a detailed characterization of such materials and the advantages and disadvantages of the analysis using conventional gas chromatography with flame ionization detection and mass spectrometery as well as two-dimensional comprehensive gas chromatography with time of flight mass spectrometry.