The Dugong, Halicore dugong, inhabits around the shallow sea of the Indian and the Pacific ocean, and lives mainly on marine algae.
The purpose of the present study is to examine the component fatty acid of the Dugong oil by gas-liquid chromatography using hydrogen flame ionization detector.
The sample oil (Table 1) was converted to fatty acid methyl ester by alkali-catalyzed methanolysis followed by silicic acid column treatment.
As shown in the Tables 2, 3 and 4, the presence of eighteen kinds of fatty acids ranging from 8 to 20 carbon atoms were detected, i.e.: Normal saturated acids (8, 10, 12, 14, 15, 16, 16, 17, 18 and 20 C-atoms), monoenoic acids (12, 14, 16 and 18 C-atoms), dienoic acids (14, 16 and 18 C-atoms), trienoic acid (18 C-atom), and tetraenoic acid (20 C-atoms).
According to the results, the most prominent is monoenoic C18 acid (41.3%), followed by saturated Cl6 acid (23.0%), and the amount of these acids was more than 64% of the total fatty acids. The total saturated and unsaturated fatty acids contents are 38.7 and 61.3%, respectiveiy.