The invention discloses an
improved method for measuring the
fatty acid composition of
sorbitan monostearate. The method comprises: taking a sample and placing the sample into a flask; adding a
potassium hydroxide methanol solution, carrying out heating refluxing, and carrying out cooling; adding a
methanol solution, carrying out heating refluxing, and carrying out cooling; adding normal
hexane, and carrying out heating refluxing continuously, and carrying out cooling; adding a saturated
sodium chloride solution, carrying out shaking uniformly, carrying out standing for layering, and taking supernatant fluid and carrying out
anhydrous sodium sulfate drying; carrying out testing based on a gas chromatographic method; with a
capillary column with
polyethylene glycol as stationary liquid as achromatographic column, taking a proper amount of
methyl palmitate and
methyl stearate reference substances respectively and carrying out
dilution to make a solution containing 1mg of
methyl palmitate and 1mg of
methyl stearate respectively per 1ml under conditions of keeping the feeding
inlet temperature of 240 DEG C and the
detector temperature of 280 DEG C; injecting the solution into a gas chromatograph and recording a chromatogram map with the separation degrees of all chromatographic peaks meeting requirements; and taking the supernatant fluid and injecting the fluid into the gas chromatograph, recording a chromatogram map, and carrying out calculation with a
peak area based on an area normalization method. With the disclosed method, the error rate is low.