Earticle

The most common device used to measure fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) quantification is gas chromatography (GC). GC usually employs internal standard method since injection volume of sample is too small not to differ between each analysis. Methyl heptadecanoate and methyl nonadecanoate, which are odd carbon numbered fatty acid methyl ester, are commonly used because they don’t exist in natural plant lipids. In our study, the biodiesel from Dunaliella sp. contained C16:4, C16:3 FAME which have very similar retention time on gas chromatogram with C17:0, C19:0, the conventional internal standards for biodiesel analysis. To quantify FAME from Dunaliella sp., we used internal standards such as methyl dodecanoate, methyl pentadecanoate and methyl behenate. We determined the response factors of each internal standard and applied them into quantification and compared the results with those of using conventional internal standard, C17:0. Soybean FAME was used to confirm the feasibility of this method, it showed high accuracy.