HPLC separation of natural oil triglycerides into fractions with the same carbon number and numbers of double bonds

A high performance liquid Chromatographie method was developed and tested on palm oil, low-erucic-acid rapeseed oil and cocoa butter. A 100-cm long column was used, packed with Nucleosil 5 C18 and using acetonitrile/acetone, 60:40 (v/v) as mobile phase. Using this system, the oils could be separated directly into fractions specified by having the same carbon number and number of double bonds. Earlier, the same fractionation could be obtained only by a 2-step Chromatographie separation. The fractions have been found to be very pure and to have simple triglyceride composition with only one totally dominating triglyceride type in almost all cases.