Characterising the release of flavour compounds from chewing gum through HS-SPME analysis and mathematical modelling

The headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) technique combined with GC–MS was evaluated to study 33 selected flavour compounds released from chewing gum. The operating conditions of SPME were optimised, including different fibres (PDMS, DVB/CAR/PDMS, PA and PDMS/DVB), sample size, extraction time and temperature. The results indicated that while HS-SPME was a rapid and valuable technique, poor reproducibility occurred under all conditions. It was found that this deficiency could be alleviated by utilising mathematical modelling techniques, an approach which had not been previously used in the analysis of flavour compounds in chewing gum by HS-SPME. Compared to the instrumental analysis data themselves, the models provided more insights to the release behaviour of flavour compounds from chewing gum and the more reproducible kinetic rate constants might be used for comparing the release of different compounds or the same compound under different conditions.