## 1 Introduction
This is a very important process commonly used in the food sector in order to analyse the aroma properties. Among several extraction methods widely used for the extraction and determination of flavour compounds, the most frequently applied are those based on headspace (HS) analysis. Solid phase microextraction (SPME) is a sample preparation technique based on sorption that constitutes a reliable tool for the analysis of organic volatile and semi-volatile compounds [19]. In the plastic sector, the analysis of volatile organic compounds emissions from plastic and rubber materials through HS-SPME and other techniques such as (MAE)-GC-MS, (SPM)-GC-MS, (TGA)-GC-MS etc have been performed as a useful method for understanding polymer degradation and object damage made of conventional oil-based polymers such as high-density polyethylene (HDPE), low density polyethylene (LDPE), polyacrylonitrile (PAN), polyvinyl chloride (PVC), polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS), polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), polyurethane (PU), and nylon 6,6 (PA) [20; 21; 22] Specific volatile emissions can be related to deterioration, including loss of additives and polymer degradation [23]. However, headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) has not been used for the analysis of those volatile compounds released from PHAs. This technique used by the authors is combined with gas chromatography ion-trap/mass spectrometry (GC-IT/MS) in order to quantify a large number of volatile compounds in PHA samples. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that a method for analysis of volatiles is used in PHA final/commercial materials for such purpose. In the present work, three PHA materials were reinforced with organically modified and unmodified Sepiolite and Montmorillonite as described in the materials section. Clays and zeolite exchanged with various cationic surfactants have been shown to be effective adsorbents for a variety of organic compounds [24]. Sepiolite has outstanding sorption capacity and may adsorb a large variety of molecules as vapours as well as liquids due to its natural structure that forms inner zeolitic channels that provides a high microporosity and large specific surface area [25]. Sepiolite fibre leads to the presence of numerous silanol groups (Si-OH) all along the edges of the fibre [26] which are useful as fillers providing reinforcing characteristics with polar polymers [27]. Sodium montmorillonite (Na-MMT) is a smectic nanoclay that has two tetrahedral sheets of silica sandwiching a central octahedral sheet of alumina and largely used in industry too due to its swelling and adsorption properties [28; 29]. The aim of this research was the development and characterization of novel composite materials based on different PHA matrices to diminish the release of undesirable oxidised lipid molecules through the introduction of organoclays. The objective is to establish a methodology for the identification of the key volatiles released by commercial PHAs which are responsible for unpleasant odours, and demonstrate that the introduction of commercial organoclays can be an efficient approach to capture those volatiles and reduce the displeasing aroma. The studied techniques used in this paper can be useful for processors in order to monitor the oxidative degradation of PHAs with storage time and to evaluate their acceptance on the market.