Analysis of triacylglycerols on porous graphitic carbon by high temperature liquid chromatography

The retention behaviour of several triacylglycerols (TAGs) and fats on Hypercarb®, a porous graphitic carbon column (PGC), was investigated in liquid chromatography (LC) under isocratic elution mode with an evaporative light scattering detector (ELSD). Mixtures of chloroform/isopropanol were selected as mobile phase for a suitable retention time to study the influence of temperature. The retention was different between PGC and non-aqueous reversed phase liquid chromatography (NARP-LC) on octadecyl phase. The retention of TAGs was investigated in the interval 30–70 °C. Retention was greatly affected by temperature: it decreases as the column temperature increases. Selectivity of TAGs was also slightly influenced by the temperature. Moreover, this chromatographic method is compatible with a mass spectrometer (MS) detector by using atmospheric pressure chemical ionisation (APCI): same fingerprints of cocoa butter and shea butter were obtained with LC–ELSD and LC-APCI–MS. These preliminary results showed that the PGC column could be suitable to separate quickly triacylglycerols in high temperature conditions coupled with ELSD or MS detector.