University of Ferrara, Department of Chemical, Pharmaceutical, and Agricultural Sciences, via L. Borsari 46, Ferrara, Italy; Organic and Biological Analytical Chemistry Group, MolSys Research Unit, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium.
Organic and Biological Analytical Chemistry Group, MolSys Research Unit, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium.
Talanta. 2022 Feb 1;238(Pt 2):123019. doi: 10.1016/j.talanta.2021.123019. Epub 2021 Nov 5.
The production of renewable fuels as biodiesel and bio-jet fuel is usually originated by the transformation and processing of oleaginous feedstocks, mainly composed of triacylglycerols. Currently, a significant part of the triacylglycerol production relies on grassy oil crops or other woody oil plants, representing more than 120 million metric tons every year. Considering that the worldwide triacylglycerol demand is expected to rise in the future, alternative routes are necessary to ensure a sustainable biodiesel industry and limit diesel price volatility. In this context, the use of animal fats could be an interesting alternative for biodiesel production as the production of animal byproducts represents nearly 17 million tons per year in the European Union only (2020). Animal fats, however, contain large amounts of no-esterified fatty acids and other oxygen compounds, reducing the yield of biodiesel. Therefore, a specific pretreatment is needed before the trans-esterification process. The setup of such appropriate pretreatments requires detailed upstream characterization of the minor components present in the feedstock. For this purpose, the minor component profile of animal fat was investigated by comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography coupled with high-resolution time-of-flight mass spectrometry. This was preceded by an innovative sample fractionation and focalization of these minor components by a preparative liquid chromatographic column method. The overall method permitted to extract different levels of information from the two-dimensional chromatograms, leading to a tentative identification of more than 150 compounds, mainly oxygenated, belonging to different chemical classes.
可再生燃料（如生物柴油和生物喷气燃料）的生产通常源自油脂原料的转化和加工，这些油脂原料主要由三酰基甘油组成。目前，三酰甘油的生产很大一部分依赖于草本油料作物或其他木本油料植物，每年的产量超过 1.2 亿吨。考虑到未来全球三酰甘油的需求预计会上升，有必要寻找替代途径，以确保生物柴油行业的可持续发展，并限制柴油价格的波动。在这种情况下，动物脂肪的使用可能是生物柴油生产的一个有趣选择，因为仅在欧盟，动物副产品的年生产就接近 1700 万吨（2020 年）。然而，动物脂肪中含有大量未酯化脂肪酸和其他含氧化合物，这降低了生物柴油的产量。因此，在酯交换过程之前需要进行特定的预处理。这种适当预处理的设置需要对原料中存在的少量成分进行详细的上游表征。为此，通过综合二维气相色谱法与高分辨率飞行时间质谱联用，对动物脂肪中的少量成分进行了研究。在这之前，采用了一种创新的样品分级和聚焦方法，即用制备液相色谱柱法对这些少量成分进行分级和聚焦。该综合方法可以从二维色谱图中提取不同层次的信息，从而对 150 多种化合物进行了初步鉴定，这些化合物主要是含氧的，属于不同的化学类别。
