Spectroscopic studies on thermal degradation and quantitative prediction on acid value of edible oil during frying by Raman spectroscopy

[Display omitted] •Raman spectroscopy characterize thermal degradation of edible oils during frying.•Raman spectroscopy characterize thermal degradation of edible oils during frying.•PIRs were optimized by Pearson correlation analysis combined with heat map.•Univariate models for AV of single frying oil had high correlations (0.954–0.984).•RPD of LSSVM model for AV of multi-varieties frying oils was 11.351. The health risks posed by harmful substances resulting from the thermal degradation of frying oils are of great concern. Characteristic peak intensity ratios (PIRs) screened from Raman spectra were used to characterize the thermal degradation. High correlation coefficients between PIRs and acid values (AVs) of 0.972 (linear fitting), 0.984 (logarithmic function fitting), and 0.954 (linear fitting) for fried soybean oil, canola oil, and palm oil, were obtained at the PIRs of I1267/I1749, I1267/I1659, and I1267/I1749, respectively. The highly correlated PIRs common to the three oils were determined by Pearson’s correlation coefficient combined with heat maps. To accommodate both linear and nonlinear features, a global model for predicting AVs of multi-varieties frying oils was constructed using a least-squares support vector machine algorithm, and the results performed well with a root mean square error of prediction of 0.016 and a ratio of prediction to deviation of 11.351. The whole results demonstrate that Raman spectroscopy could characterize the thermal degradation and has excellent quantitative analysis ability for food control based on AV in frying oils, thus providing a new approach to quality control of frying oils.