ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes several hyphenated techniques and their applications in lipid analysis. The hyphenated techniques are very useful for lipid analysis; chromatographic methods provide excellent separations, and the mass spectrometer works as a universal detector. Gas chromatography is the chromatographic method used primarily for the separation of lipids, and especially for fatty acids (FA) and FA derivatives. Infrared spectroscopy can be used in the determination of FA configurations and thereby provide useful structural information about functional groups. Liquid chromatography is another frequently used chromatographic method in lipid analysis, especially for the separation of intact lipid molecules. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is one of the powerful spectroscopic techniques for structure elucidation of unknown compounds, and it has been used also in lipid analyses. Hyphenated NMR is an alternative approach that can be used in the characterization of components of a mixture.
