FT-NIR fatty acid determination method

Abstract

A method for the rapid analysis of the fatty acid components present in a fat and / or oil-containing material is provided wherein the levels and types of fatty acids present in a sample are determined using Fourier Transform Near Infrared (FT-NIR) spectroscopy. The FT-NIR technique is developed by preparing a calibration matrix based on FT-NIR and Gas Chromatography (GC) analysis of known standards, and subsequently using the calibration matrix to analyze the FT-NIR spectral data obtained from a sample to be tested.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0001] The invention relates to a method for the measurement of fatty acid content in a selected material by the use of radiation in the near infrared region of the light spectrum. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0002] Recently there has been increasing interest in the determination of the quantity and type of fatty acids present in the oils and fats which are used in the food, and other industries. For example, recently government and health organizations have called for, or imposed regulations on the amount and type of fatty acids contained in food products. Also, food suppliers are increasingly being mandated to provide information on the quantity and types of fatty acids contained within their products. This is particularly true for materials termed as “trans fatty” acids, as discussed hereinbelow. [0003] Fats and oils are made of a complex mixture of a chemically similar group of compounds known as fatty acids. However, the composition of the fats and oils p...

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Benefits of technology

[0025] Accordingly, it is a principal advantage of the present invention to provide a rapid method for the quantitative analysis of the fatty acid content of a material containing fats and / or oils.

[0026] It is a further advantage of the present invention to provide a method in which the tested material is a food product.

[0027] It is a still further advantage of the present invention to provide a method wherein the analytical technique is based on a more accurate instrument calibration matrix.

[0028] The advantages set out hereinabove, as well as other objects and goals inherent thereto, are at least partially or fully provided by the method for fatty acid analysis in a material, of the present invention, as set out herein below.

[0029] As such, the present invention provides a method for the determination of the fatty acid type and / or content of a fat or oil component of a test sample material, which method comprises preparation of a calibration matrix using a fatty acid reference analytical technique adapted to identify the type and quantity of fatty acids in a baseline reference material, and relating the results obtained to the spectral data obtained from an FT-NIR analysis of said baseline reference material;

[0030] analysing a test sample material using an FT-NIR technique to obtain FT-NIR spectral data for said test sample material; and

Problems solved by technology

This is of concern since recent studies have questioned the long term health issues related to the consumption of trans fatty acids.

While these techniques provide the necessary information, they suffer from some inherent difficulties.

In a production situation, the time and cost of this technique can be prohibitive.

Other chromatography techniques including silver ion Thin Liquid Chromatography (TLC-GC), and silver ion High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) are also known, but these techniques suffer from the same problems as the above mentioned GC techniques.

However, it is also time consuming to prepare the sample for testing, and is subject to errors introduced by absorption of other materials such as water or the like.

As such, using mid-infrared dispersive spectrometers that use prisms or diffraction gratings to resolve the infrared light into its component wavelengths, does not typically have the required accuracy necessary for precise quantitative analysis.

Also, it is inconvenient and time consuming to prepare samples for analysis by this technique.

While these techniques have some advantages over the prior art methods, they both rely on establishing a calibration curve (or matrix) based on a mid-FTIR technique, with its inherent analysis difficulties and accuracy limitations.

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