How To Automate FAME Sample Preparation

Derivatization of Fatty Acids (FAs) to Fatty Acid Methyl Esters (FAMEs) is a convenient step to be carried out for the analysis of the fat composition of many sample matrices.

The analysis of fatty acids is commonly performed in many industries (food industries, biomedical industries, cosmetic industries and soon…). In the food industry in particular, the distribution of fatty acids is usually controlled as an index of product quality in order to protect against adulteration.

GC is the predominant technique to analyse FAs, but before the analysis the FAs should be converted to FAMEs to guarantee sharper peaks and better separation.

The conversion of FAs to FAMEs can be reached in many ways. The most widely used methods involve acid-catalyzed and base-catalyzed reactions. The automation of this reactions, with respect to the manual processing, allows to obtain better results in terms of precision and accuracy, to decrease the amount of consumed reagents and the exposition to hazardous substances and to provide unattended operations for hours.

Discover how HT4000A is able to completely automate both the acid-catalyzed and base-catalyzed methods.

Contact Us