Profiling fatty acids in vegetable oils by reactive pyrolysis–gas chromatography with dimethyl carbonate and titanium silicate

A novel methodology in on-line pyrolysis–gas chromatography (Py–GC) for the fast analysis of fatty acids in vegetable oils with minimal sample treatment and the use of non-toxic reagents is described. Pyrolysis at 500 °C for 10 s of sub-microgram quantity of vegetable oil dissolved in dimethyl carbonate (DMC) and in the presence of nanopowder titanium silicon oxide resulted in the production of fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs) as unique products. Pyrolysis performed by means of a resistively heated filament pyrolyser interfaced to a GC–MS apparatus enabled the direct analysis of evolved FAMEs. The DMC/Py–GC–MS analysis was tested on soybean, coconut, linseed, walnut and olive oil and the results compared to the classical BF3–methanol as reference methodology. The DMC method exhibited a lower precision and was biased towards lower levels of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) in comparison to the BF3–methanol method, but was more advantageous in terms of reduced sample treatment, waste generation and risk factors of employed chemicals.