Fatty Acid Ester-Hydrocarbon Correlation Trial: a Comment

Abstract

DURING the sixth International Symposium on Gas Chromatography in Rome¹, Dr P. A. T. Swoboda, on behalf of the Data Sub-committee of the Gas Chromatography Discussion Group, presented a preliminary report on an inter-laboratory trial on the reproducibility of retention data, which gave the following conclusion: “… the use of the carbon number scale leads to a high degree of agreement between laboratories for the methylesters of unsaturated fatty acids. In contrast there is a wide variation for the hydrocarbons. Thus the use of a secondary series of standards (such as the methylesters of the n-alkanoic acids) as the basis for a logarithmic scale of retention gives a higher inter-laboratory precision for measurement of compounds of similar structure than would be obtained by using the Retention Index based on the n-alkanes”.