Multivariate study of spectral data of oils

In this paper the study of structural differences and thermal degradation of edible oils during heating is presented. The study is performed on five types of vegetable oil: extra virgin olive oil, pomace olive oil, sunflower, canola and palm oil. The oils were measured by Raman spectroscopy. This method brings advantages as rapidity, independence on chemicals, provides specific information on chemical composition and structure of material and is able to detect structural changes. For the processing of large data sets multivariate analytical method as Principal component analysis and Cluster analysis are applied to find the patterns within the data. The evaluation of process of thermal degradation is also based on the major decomposition product of oxidized linoleate appearing in spectra via band 1640 cm−1. Mathematically processed data indicate the least effect of heating for olive oils, the greatest degradation and loss of unsaturation for sunflower oil