Applications of chemometrics in the analysis and characterization of lipids

Abstract: The main topics of this thesis are the analysis and characterizationof lipids and applications of chemometrics in this field.The techniques of experimental design, polynomial model building,response surface methods, principal components analysis and partialleast squares regression have been explored and utilized in thedeveopment and optimization of analytical methods.Optimized methods for the gas chromatographic analysis of fattyacid methyl esters and of acetylated diacylglycerols have beendeveloped.Also, a strategy for the multivariate optimization of liquidchromatographic methods has been developed. This strategy utilizesprincipal components analysis of tabulated physical data and highlyreduced fractional factorial designs in a block-wise approach torelate the physical characteristics of solvents to the chromatographicprocess. This strategy has been utilized to optimize the thin layerchromatographic analysis of polar lipids and the high performanceliquid chromatographic analysis of molecular species of polar lipids.The use of multivariate classification in chemical identification andprocess control has also been investigated.