Quantitative Determination of Glycerol in Antarctic Krill (Euphausia superba Dana) by High-Performance Thin-Layer Chromatography

In this reported study, a direct high-performance thin-layer chromatographic (HPTLC) method was developed to qualitatively detect and quantitatively determine glycerol in Antarctic krill for the first time. This procedure was based on the extraction of glycerol by ultrasonic solvent extraction with anhydrous ethanol, silica-gel column chromatographic separation, HPTLC detection and quantification using methylene chloride–methanol (5:1, v/v) as the developing solvent and alkaline potassium permanganate as chromogenic agent. The content of glycerol was 1.3725 ± 0.218 mg/g in freeze-dried Antarctic krill. The structure of glycerol in the Antarctic krill was subsequently determined by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) which verified the presence of the material in the krill. The HPTLC method exhibited excellent accuracy with a recovery of 90.1–103.3% and good precision with a relative standard deviation (RSD) of 1.59–4.84%. The results clearly exhibited the applicability of the proposed for quantif...