Separation of Diastereomeric and Enantiomeric Alkyl Nitrates-Systematic Approach to Chiral Discrimination on...

High-resolution gas chromatographic separation of all diastereomeric monomethyl-substituted cyclohexyl nitrates is shown on a nonpolar methylpolysiloxane stationary phase, and the first application of this procedure to the environmental diastereomeric analysis of alkyl nitrates is presented. Two characteristic signals in the achiral analysis of atmospheric samples could be assigned to the smallest alkyl nitrate containing two asymmetric carbon atoms, 3-methyl-2-pentyl nitrate. Retention indices in the temperature-programmed separation based on the n-alkanes were determined. The homologous series of 1-alkyl nitrates were found to be useful as ECD-visible n-alkanes. Enantiomeric separation of alkyl nitrates was achieved on heptakis(3-O-acetyl,-2,6-di-O-pentyl)-β-cyclodextrin (LIPODEX-D). The influence of the nitrooxy group and the alkyl chain length on the chiral discrimination on LIPODEX-D is discussed for 25 chiral alkyl nitrates. The absolute configurations of some alkyl nitrates were assigned by asymmetric synthesis of enantiomerically pure references. The complexity of the alkyl nitrate mixtures present in air samples does not allow a direct chiral separation as the alkyl nitrates partly coelute on the LIPODEX-D column. Column coupling of LIPODEX-D with a polar achiral stationary phase like polyalkylenglycol (PAG) was successfully applied to solve this problem, and the chiral alkyl nitrates present in a typical air sample were separated. A systematic nomenclature for alkyl nitrates is introduced to handle the steadily growing number of branched and long-chain alkyl nitrates detected in environmental analysis.