Aldehydes determination in edible oil samples employing 1-Naphthalenyl hydrazine as derivatizing agent followed by HPLC-FLD

Aldehydes formation in foods is the result of processing or degradation steps. These compounds provoke deterioration in taste, flavor, odor, color, texture and appearance, and nutritional value could be affected, and moreover potential adverse health effects could be derived. In this context, their analysis is essential in quality control. Therefore, this work proposes a fluorescent derivatization methodology based on 1-Naphthalenyl hydrazine as derivatizing agent for the pentanal, hexanal, heptanal, octanal, nonanal, and decanal determination followed by HPLC-FLD, obtaining limits of detections in the interval of 4.0–6.2 µg L⁻¹. The derivatization process was optimized through full factorial and Box-Behnken experimental design and subsequently validated and applied to aldehyde determination in edible oil samples. The proposed derivatization methodology is efficient with adequate precision (expressed as relative standard deviation <10 %) and accuracy (92.57–109.68 %). The proposed derivatization method offers a competitive alternative to existing approaches that employ agents such as 2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine, di(pyrrol-2-yl)methanone, or other derivatizing compounds. Moreover, the limits of detection obtained by fluorescence are comparable to those of chromatography systems accoupled to mass spectrometry. The methodology was applied to the quantification of the total long-chain aldehyde content, observing excellent perspectives in food quality control, so it could be applied to several aldehydes and complex samples.