Fractionation of fish oil fatty acid methyl esters by means of argentation and reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography, and its utility in total fatty acid analysis.

The utility of reversed-phase and argentation high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) as pre-fractionation methods in fatty acid analysis is discussed. Both HPLC modes were applied to cod liver oil fatty acid methyl esters. Apart from positional isomers, the fractions obtained by reversed-phase HPLC were analysed by gas-liquid chromatography and appear to be free of the usually occurring “critical pairs”. The mechanism of retention of the fatty acid methyl esters on low-loaded silver nitrate-impregnated silicas is discussed. It is shown that argentation HPLC is a rapid semi-preparative pre-fractionation method for highly unsaturated fatty esters with 3–6 double bonds.