C146-E310 Technical Report: Determination of Mineral Oil Saturated and Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Edible Oil by Liquid-liquid-gas Chromatography with Dual Detection

Nowadays, food contamination by mineral oil (MO) is a very important issue and its presence in edible oils is widely documented. Mineral oils are hydrocarbons mixture of petrochemical origin containing mainly two families of compounds, namely mineral oil saturated hydrocarbons (MOSH) and mineral oil aromatic hydrocarbons (MOAH). The most used approach for mineral oil analysis is liquid chromatography (LC) coupled to gas chromatography (GC) with ame ionization detection. Using a silica column, triglycerides can be retained and the separation of MOSH and MOAH can be achieved. However, in the case of vegetable oils, the presence of ole ns (mainly squalene and isomers) does not allow the correct quanti cation of the MOAH fraction. For such a reason additional tools are needed. In the present research, a silica column was coupled to a silver-ion column to retain ole ns. The proposed method was applied for the analysis of different edible oils, obtaining satisfactory performance characteristics.