Comparison of various types of stationary phases in non-aqueous reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry of glycerolipids in blackcurrant oil and its enzymatic hydrolysis mixture

The selection of column packing during the development of high-performance liquid chromatography method is a crucial step to achieve sufficient chromatographic resolution of analyzed species in complex mixtures. Various stationary phases are tested in this paper for the analysis of complex mixture of triacylglycerols (TGs) in blackcurrant oil using non-aqueous reversed-phase (NARP) system with acetonitrile–2-propanol mobile phase. Conventional C18 column in the total length of 45 cm is used for the separation of TGs according to their equivalent carbon number, the number and positions of double bonds and acyl chain lengths. The separation of TGs and their more polar hydrolysis products after the partial enzymatic hydrolysis of blackcurrant oil in one chromatographic run is achieved using conventional C18 column. Retention times of TGs are reduced almost 10 times without the loss of the chromatographic resolution using ultra high-performance liquid chromatography with 1.7 μm C18 particles. The separation in NARP system on C30 column shows an unusual phenomenon, because the retention order of TGs changes depending on the column temperature, which is reported for the first time. The commercial monolithic column modified with C18 is used for the fast analysis of TGs to increase the sample throughput but at cost of low resolution.