ISO 12966-2:2017

Animal and vegetable fats and oils - Gas chromatography of fatty acid methyl esters - Part 2: Preparation of methyl esters of fatty acids

ISO 12966-2:2017 specifies methods of preparing the methyl esters of fatty acids.

It includes methods for preparing fatty acid methyl esters from animal and vegetable fats and oils, fatty acids and soaps. To cover different requirements, four methylation methods are specified, namely:

a) a "rapid" transmethylation procedure under alkaline conditions;

b) a "general" transmethylation/methylation procedure under sequential alkaline and acid conditions;

c) a BF₃ transmethylation procedure;

d) an alternative procedure using acid-catalysed transmethylation of glycerides.

Methyl esters so produced are used in various analytical procedures requiring such derivatives, e.g. gas-liquid chromatography (GLC), thin-layer chromatography (TLC) and infrared spectrometry (IR).

Milk and milk products (or fat coming from milk and milk products) are excluded from the scope of this document.

To comply with a standard, you need to quickly understand its issues in order to determine its impact on your activity.

The Requirements department helps you quickly locate within the normative text:
- mandatory clauses to satisfy,
- non-essential but useful clauses to know, such as permissions and recommendations.

The identification of these types of clauses is based on the document “ISO / IEC Directives, Part 2 - Principles and rules of structure and drafting of ISO documents ”as well as on a constantly enriched list of verbal forms.

With Requirements, quickly access the main part of the normative text!

The Redline + service - standards comparator allows you to easily and simply identify major changes between the current standard and its last canceled version.

At a glance, you will be able to identify the additions, deletions or modifications to a text, table, figure and formula.


The Redlines + service is offered to you on the collection of French standards in force, in French language and in HTML and PDF format.

For an overview of the service, click on View a standard in redline format

COBAZ is the simple and effective solution to meet the normative needs related to your activity, in France and abroad.

Available by subscription, CObaz is THE modular solution to compose according to your needs today and tomorrow. Quickly discover CObaz!

Request your free, no-obligation live demo

I discover COBAZ