Silver-ion reversed-phase comprehensive two-dimensional liquid chromatography combined with mass spectrometric detection in lipidic food analysis

The triacylglycerol (TAG) profiles present in real world lipidic samples are usually quite complex and, as such, monodimensional high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) techniques are inadequate when challenged with such matrices. In this respect, the complementary use of silver-ion (Ag) and non-aqueous (NA) reversed-phase (RP) HPLC can be exploited if thorough TAG separations are required. The present investigation reports the employment of a newly developed comprehensive LC (LC x LC) system, based on the different separation mechanisms of the aforementioned techniques, and applied to a rice oil sample. The approach was successful in the separation of a high number of solutes, otherwise unachievable through monodimensional LC. Furthermore, the use of atmospheric pressure chemical ionization mass spectrometry (APCI-MS), as detection system, provided a third analytical dimension boosting the identification power of the comprehensive chromatographic method.