Methods
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Page 1 of 29 Analytical Methods
Graphical Abstract
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FFA Analysis
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Methods
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4 1 Analytical Approaches for free fatty acids assessment in oils and fats
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6 2 S. A. Mahesar1, S. T. H. Sherazi1*, Abdul Rauf Khaskheli2, Aftab A. Kandhro3,
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9 3 Sirajuddin1
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4 National Centre of Excellence in Analytical Chemistry, University of Sindh,
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24 titration method is still being used in most of the edible oil industries for the
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6 25 determination of FFA. Due to lack of any comprehensive review on this very important
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8 26 topic, we have made an attempt to present a review in order to discuss various available
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27 methods with special emphasis on the instrumental methods due to their high sensitivity,
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42 1. Introduction
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6 43 Vegetable oils or fats are extracted from the oilseeds in the crude form. Various refining
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8 44 stages such as degumming, neutralization, dewaxing, bleaching and deodorization are
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45 followed to convert extracted crude oils to edible oils. During processing, a number of
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65 (b) Spectroscopic methods
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6 66 (c) Electrochemical methods
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8 67 Generally, second and third group involves variety of sophisticated instruments with
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68 diverse approach that compete with each other in terms of speed of analysis, amenability
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88 2. Discussion
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6 89 2.1. Colorimetric methods
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8 90 Various calorimetric methods have been reported by several researchers.
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91 2.1.1. Copper soap method
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111 the practical and health concerns of benzene, various authors used alternative to benzene
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6 112 such as toluene 9, isooctane 10
and cyclohexane 11
. Gyrik et al., 12
proposed a new
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8 113 analytical tool for the determination of total FFA content in thermally treated cooking oil.
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114 The method was based on the colorimetric copper soap combined with the concept of
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133 attention due to the complications in the analysis and incompatible values as compared to
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6 134 the official method.
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8 135 A continuous liquid-liquid extraction system using a single-channel flow-reversal
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136 injection mode was also proposed for the direct determination.15 The results provided by
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156 The benefits of proposed method included the lack of toxic solvents, analysis at room
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6 157 temperature and no need for preliminary neutralization of acid admixtures.
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10 159 Saad et al.,20 reported a single and two-line manifold FI methods using PHP and
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180 Good agreement was found between the standard non-aqueous titrimetry method and the
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6 181 proposed method. The proposed method offers high sampling rate of 4060 sample/h
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8 182 and considerably low cost automated system that needs minimum human intervention
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183 over long periods of time. Recently a visual and green titrimetric method was proposed
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203 high sample throughput. Recently, Fedosov et al.,27 developed a novel microtitration
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6 204 method for determining the FFA in small samples of oil (5150 mg). The method was
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8 205 based on the optical signal of pyranine (aqueous pK 7.3), which changed its absorbance
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206 and fluorescence. All reactants were dissolved in a medium with universal solubility,
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227 utilized by various authors30-34 to develop HPLC and FIA methods. The FIA system
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6 228 coupled with voltammetric detection had high sensitivity, better reproducibility, low
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8 229 solvent consumption and excellent throughput of 60 samples/h. Unfortunately this
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230 technique did not receive much attention. Li et al.,35 proposed a new method using
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251 2.2.3. pH-metric methods
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6 252 In general the low polarity and high viscosity of oils have made it impractical to use pH
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8 253 metric methods for the determination of FFA. Lapshina et al.,37 carried out pH metric
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254 measurements by extracting FFA from oil into a polar solvent. In order to facilitate
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274 2.3. Spectroscopic methods
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6 275 2.3.1. Infrared methods
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8 276 2.3.1.1. Direct Infrared methods
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277 The possibility of utilizing FTIR spectroscopy for FFA analysis has been examined by
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296 After the above preliminary studies, a new procedure was reported for FFA in olive oil
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6 297 based on attenuated total reflectance (ATR) FTIR spectroscopic measurements using
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8 298 partial least-squares regression (PLSR).49 The developed method was applicable to
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299 samples of different categories of olive oil with analysis time of 5 min/sample. Che Man
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319 checked by comparison to a conventional AOCS titrimetric procedure. Yu et al.,56-57
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6 320 reported a new approach for the automated determination of FFA in edible oils using
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8 321 spectral reconstitution (SR) technique. The data obtained by this technique was accurate
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322 and reproducible. The developed automated method was capable of analysing ~90
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342 saponification was reported.59 The method was automatable, and capable of analyzing
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6 343 about 60 samples/h. Later on a sensitive and rapid methodology for the quantification of
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8 344 a low levels (<0.005%) of FFA in edible oils was described using sodium hydrogen
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345 cyanamide (NaHNCN) to convert FFA to their carboxylate salts.60-61 The feasibility of
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365 After the initial work of Frankel et al.,64 there was no any further work carried out on NIR
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6 366 for ten years. Majority of the methods were developed on mid IR range. In 1997, a direct
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8 367 method for the determination of FFA in fish oil was reported.65 PLS and multiple linear
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368 regression (MLR) was used for calibration and described that first derivative
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387 A novel method was developed for the estimation of FFA content directly in high-oleic
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6 388 sunflower seeds.68 For the calibration a sample set of different varieties from the harvest
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8 389 of 2004 and 2005 was used. The developed NIR spectroscopic calibration was calculated
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390 with a modified PLS algorithm, standard normal variate (SNV), detrend scatter correction
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411 2.3.3. Raman spectrometry
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6 412 Fourier transform (FT) Raman spectrometry in combination with PLS regression
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8 413 was used for direct reagent-free determination of FFA content in olive oils and olives.
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414 Oils were directly investigated in a simple flow cell, while olives were measured in a
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435 tuna (Thunnus alalunga) using high-resolution l3C NMR spectroscopy.75 FFA carbonyl
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6 436 resonances were detected at the lower field of the 13C NMR carbonyl region and used for
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8 437 its quantitative determination. NMR data agreed with those obtained using UV
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438 spectrophotometry, showed that NMR is a suitable method to follow lipolytic alterations.
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459 determination of FFA in edible oils using an automated thermometric titration with KOH
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6 460 in isopropanol as titrant.82 The end point was indicated by the strongly exothermic base-
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8 461 catalyzed reaction between acetone and chloroform. The procedure was accurate,
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462 sensitive, easy to use, fast, and highly reproducible but did not get much attention.
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482 Conflict of Interest
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6 483 The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.
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485 Acknowledgement
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4 503 References
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