STUDY OF COCONUT OIL SPIKED WITH NAPHTHALENES AND BENZO[A]PYRENES COMPOUNDS BEFORE AND AFTER REFINING BY LC-GC×GC–TOFMS/FID

Mineral oil hydrocarbons are compounds suspected to be toxic especially the aromatics compounds (MOAH). In order to evaluate the toxicity of these compounds and the impact of the refining process on their presence in the oil products, a study has been conducted spiking crude coconut oil having low MOAH content with PAHs compounds (3 naphthalenes and 8 benzo[a]pyrenes spiked at 1ppm). The characterisation of these samples, before and after refining, was achieved thanks to a novel fully implemented LC-GC×GC–ToFMS/FID platform. The quantification of the PAHs compounds was performed with calibration curves for each compounds and recovery tests were performed to determine the loss during the sample preparation. The sample preparation method chosen was the recently updated EN 16995:2017. The MOAH content was quantified with the help of a new software recently developed to handle the 2D quantification of mineral oil [1]. Interestingly, it was noticed during the analyses that epoxidation was removing not only interferences but also the PAHs compounds. Therefore, the analyses have also been done without epoxidation. The conclusion of this study is the almost complete removal of the PAHs compounds during the refining process as well as low boiling point MOAH. However; the higher fractions from C25 are still present after refining.