Animal and vegetable fats play an important role as a component of our daily diet. Since December 2016, food manufacturers have been required by the EU Food Information Regulation to indicate the fatty acid composition on the packaging. The relevance of fatty acid determination is increasing.
For FAME analysis to determine the fatty acid composition there are several methods that we have automated. These include the DGF methods DGF C-VI 10 and C-VI 11, the SLMB 269.1 and the AOCS Ce 2-66, which involves methylation with the highly toxic boron trifluoride: An unpleasant step for any user.
Manual preparation must be very reliable and clean in order to minimize the risk of carry-over and achieve good reproducibility. Therefore, an online automation of the sample preparation with subsequent gas chromatographic analysis was developed. The CHRONECT Workstation FAMEs takes over manually difficult work steps and ensures fast preparation. The automation thus not only increases the reproducibility but also the sample throughput.
This workstation handles all the steps necessary for transesterification, methylation of fatty acids, extraction and injection. An integrated centrifuge accelerates the phase separation. Depending on the chromatographic conditions, 27 to 40 samples can be processed in 24 hours. The autosampler can be adapted quickly and flexibly for alternative processing methods, for example the transesterification of short-chain fatty acids. Various applications can also be automated at one workstation.
Advantages of the system
- Restriction of manual work to weighing the sample and changing the solvent
- safe handling of chemical substances
- minimal risk of carry-over due to frequent flushing of the syringes
- minimized use of solvents due to small volumes
- great repeatability
- increased throughput rate due to nesting by means of CHRONOS
- proven comparable measured values as with manual preparation