Theoretical and experimental studies on the effects of fatty acids on the performance of natural and synthetic antioxidants inhibiting the oxidation of palm olein and corn oil

Abstract

The aim of this research project was to study the effects of adding saturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids on the performance of synthetic antioxidant, tertbutylhydroquinone and natural antioxidant, α–tocopherol in inhibiting the autoxidation of selected vegetable oils. Two types of vegetable oils have been used in this study: palm olein and corn oil. Palm olein was chosen because it contains high level of saturated fatty acid of palmitic (C16:0), approximately 46% while corn oil shows high content of polyunsaturated fatty acid of linoleic (C18:2), 54%, respectively. In this research, two types of fatty acids, palmitic and linoleic acid were utilized to test their effectiveness on antioxidants performance both, experimentally and theoretically. For the experimental studies, the vegetable oils were mixed with fatty acids at four different concentrations: 0.25, 0.5, 1.0 and 3.0 % in the presence or in the absence of antioxidants. The mixture was heated in the oven at 60 °C for 15 days.