Triglyceride composition of coconut oil

Abstract

Abstract Triglycerides of coconut oil were fractionated by GLC into 13 groups based on their carbon numbers of 28 to 52. These groups represent 99.8% of the total glycerides of coconut oil. With the fatty acid composition of each group, it was possible to calculate the composition of 79 types of triglycerides. These types are defined by the nature of their constitutive fatty acids but the position of the acids on glycerol is unknown. Each group usually has only one major type of triglyceride. For example, group 36 has 52% of trilaurin. Also four types of triglycerides comprise 42.4% of the total glycerides and 24 types comprise 85%. The experimentally found distributions in each group are compared to the random distributions calculated from the fatty acid composition. For groups with carbon numbers 38 and 40, the experimental and random distributions were very similar but for most other groups, the distributions found were much different from the calculated random distributions.