Determining the shelf-life of edible fats and oils under normal storage conditions is a tedious and time-consuming task. Accelerated tests are therefore frequently used to determine the stability of the products at ambient conditions. However, the mechanisms of lipid oxidation at accelerated conditions may be different from those under normal storage conditions, leading to errors in the shelf-life predictions. This article describes an automated accelerated method, namely Rancimat, for shelf-life prediction of edible fats and oils under normal storage conditions, and the effect of its operational parameters on these predictions.

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