Research

The main research activity of FABES is related to physical and chemical interactions between polymeric materials and contacting media. Typical examples are diffusion processes of ingredients from plastics, paper and board, printing inks, adhesives and other materials. Packaging materials or parts of, drinking tubes, containers, floor mats or other consumer articles made from these materials can release contaminants through diffusion processes into foodstuffs, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, water or ambient air.

It is possible to determine both the migration of additives, degradation or by-products from a material to the adjacent medium and the permeation of such substances through a material. It could be of high interest to measure the diffusion not only after one time point at one temperature but also at several time points at several temperatures. Such kinetic measurements enable do determine valuable data (diffusion coefficient D_P, distribution coefficient K_P,F, material specific constant A_P), which are necessary to perform modelling.

The diffused substances or their reaction products with mentioned above contacting media can be of toxicological relevance or may lead to formation of off-odours. FABES performs trouble shooting about the reasons for occurrence of such processes and develops the needed analytical methods. Furthermore theoretical models for the mathematical estimation of diffusion processes are developed and established.

In addition FABES cooperates with several institutions, associations, networks and industry within EU- and other projects concerning different research themes. This includes not only analytical work, but also e.g. scenarios, which could be investigated more deeply by modelling.

Please find some examples of research projects under section “Expertise”.