Determination of Mineral Oil Hydrocarbons in Vegetable Oil

Tzantzis, V.A., Panagiotopoulou, V.A.

Geeneral Chemical State Laboratory of Greece Athens, GR

Many foods can be contaminated with mineral oil products. These may be detected in trace
amounts, from their use in the production process (lubricants or coating materials) or found
in large portion in some oils and fats used for the preparation of animal feed. [1].
Due to the consumption potential health hazards related to mineral oil, it is important to
develop a simple, sensitive and selective analytical method for the determination of mineral
oil in vegetable oils. Mineral hydrocarbons were isolated from sunflower oil by
saponification of 20g of sunflower oil, clean up of the saponified material by LC silica gel
and finally injected cold on column to GC/FID for the determination.
For the quantification of the mineral oil contamination, substraction of the natural occurring
mineral hydrocarbons, such as C27, C29 & C31 was conducted.
Attention must be taken to blank matrix, an amount always subtracted from the total
detected mineral hydrocarbons.
The Mineral Oil Hydrocarbons are eluted in the chromatographic run as a wide peek of
unresolved compounds called hump
The saponification procedure leads to a chromatogram with fewer peaks on the plateau of
hump, unresolved compounds, and a detection limit (LOD) of 10 mg/Kg was achieved.
The use of an internal standard improves recovery at low concentration levels.
The hydrocarbon C20 can be used as internal standard since it is eluted (in the
chromatographic run) outside of the hump area. Hydrocarbons such as C48, with bigger
than humps retention time tested with unacceptable results due to their poor dilution in
an appropriate solvent like isooctane.
The standard used for the quantification purposes is a paraffin viscous solution, a food
grade Mineral Oil (Merck 1.07160.9026).
The method, of concern, can be applied as well to fat content of different products contain
sunflower oil, such as margarines, foodstuffs in cans (tuna fish ect), mayonnaise and
others.
1. Crob et al, Food Additive & Contaminants, 2001, Vol 18, No1, 1-10