Determination of Fatty Acid Contents in Edible Oils by ¹H Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Technology

Edible oil is very important in daily life, and fatty acid composition of edible oil is related to its nutritional value. Many techniques have been used to determine fatty acid composition of edible oil.Recently, due to its characteristics of convenient and quick operation, nuclear magnetic resonance(NMR) technology has been used more and more in the field of oil research. In this paper, edible oil was used as raw material, and ¹H nuclear magnetic resonance (¹H NMR) spectrum of the edible oil was determined. The ¹H NMR method for determining the mass of fatty acids in edible oil was established by analyzing the relationship between resonance peaks in ¹H NMR spectrum with hydrogen nuclei in fatty acids. The molar contents of saturated and unsaturated fatty acids were calculated by using the peak areas of the resonance peaks.The molar mass contentof saturated fatty acid triglycerides was also calculated. Then, the contents of fatty acids in 20 edible oils were calculated. The contents of fatty acids were also determined by gas chromatography (GC) method. The good linear relationship between the results of ¹H NMR and GC methods with a correlation coefficient (R²) close to 1 indicated that the ¹H NMR technique could be used for the rapid determination of fatty acid composition in edible oils instead of GC.