Quantitation in the analysis of transesterified soybean oil by capillary gas chromatography 1

A rapid quantitative capillary gas Chromatographic method has been developed for studying transesterification of soybean oil (SBO) to fatty esters. Standard solutions containing methyl linoleate, mono- , di- and trilinolein were analyzed with a 1.8 m X 0.32 mm SE- 30 fused silica column. The effect of carrier gas flow on reproducibility was determined. Prior to analysis, mono- (MG) and diglycerides (DG) were silylated with N,O- bis(trimethylsilyl) trifluoroacetamide.Tridecanoin was used as an internal standard. From plots of area and weight relationships, slopes and intercepts for all four compound classes were determined. Agreement between the measured and calculated compositions of the standard solutions was good; the overall standard deviation was 0.4. Slopes and intercepts also were determined for SBO and its methyl and butyl esters. Complete separation of ester, MG, DG and triglyceride was obtained in 12 min by temperature programming from 160 to 350 C. This method of analysis gave excellent results when used in a kinetic study of SBO transesterification.