Answer to Question #61102 in Chemistry for Amit Sharma

Question

Describe the physical/chemical ways of detecting unsaturation in fatty acids. How does (5)
unsaturation affect the melting points of fatty acids?

Answer 1

Fatty acid is a carboxylic acid with a long aliphatic chain, which is either saturated or unsaturated. Unsaturated fatty acids have one or more double bounds between carbon atoms.
Among the methods of detection of unsaturated fatty acids are: infrared spectroscopy, chromatography, mass spectrometry.
Unsaturated fatty acids have lower melting points than saturated fatty acids of the same length.