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Factors Affecting Recovery of Methyl Esters of Short-Chain Fatty Acids from Esterification Mixtures^1,2,

Department of Dairy Science, University of Nebraska, Lincoln

ABSTRACT

Several techniques are available for the esterification of fatty acids prior to gas-liquid chromatography (GLC) of the resulting ester mixtures (1–9, 11–17). The methods employed for analysis of milk fat reportedly give low recovery of methyl esters of short-chain acids. Several modifications of methods (1, 3, 5, 7, 12) have been made to improve recovery by minimizing loss due to volatility of the short-chain acids or esters during the esterification procedure. For example, methods employing alcohols of higher chain length (5), to obtain less volatile esters and procedures requiring lowered reflux temperatures (6, 12, 13), have been used.

With some methods the entire esterification mixture is injected into the GLC apparatus (6,12), which often results in reagent peaks interfering with ester peaks on the chromatogram. Several reported methods employ an extraction step in the ester recovery procedure (5, 15, 16). One possible loss not investigated might be due to solubility of the short-chain esters in the water layer usually present.

¹ Published with the approval of the Director as Paper no. 1868, Journal Series, Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station, Lincoln.

² Supported by a grant from the American Dairy Association.