Quantitation of triacylglycerols from plant oils using charged aerosol detection with gradient compensation

Quantitative analysis of triacylglycerols (TGs) in plant oils and animal fats by normalization of peak areas can lead to erroneous results due to the large response differences with common HPLC detectors between the various TGs. The charged aerosol detector (CAD), that generates an almost universal response for non-volatile compounds, was combined with non-aqueous reversed-phase HPLC (NARP-HPLC) to develop a simple quantitative method, without need for RFs, for the analysis of complex natural TG mixtures from plant oils. Two 25 cm Hypersil ODS columns, connected in series, and a mobile phase gradient composed of acetonitrile, 2-propanol and hexane were used. Mobile phase compensation was applied, by mixing of the column effluent with the inversed gradient delivered by a second HPLC pump, for the suppression of the response dependency of the analytes on the mobile phase composition. Calibration curves of 16 saturated (from C7:0 to C22:0) and 3 unsaturated (C18:1, C18:2, C18:3) single-acid TG standards were measured and their RFs were compared with a previously described method using atmospheric pressure chemical ionization-mass spectrometry (APCI-MS). The variation in response of the most common TGs (containing fatty acid chains from 12 to 19 carbons) could be reduced to less than 5% making the combination of NARP-HPLC with CAD and mobile phase compensation an adequate tool for fast quantitative analysis of TGs in common plant oils.