Chiral ligand exchange countercurrent chromatography: Enantioseparation of amino acids

This work deals with the enantioseparation of α-amino acids by chiral ligand exchange high-speed countercurrent chromatography using N-n-dodecyl-l-hydroxyproline as a chiral ligand and copper(II) as a transition metal ion. A biphasic solvent system composed of n-hexane/n-butanol/aqueous phase with different volume ratios was selected for each α-amino acid. The enantioseparation conditions were optimized by enantioselective liquid-liquid extractions, in which the main influence factors, including type of chiral ligand, concentration of chiral ligand and transition metal ion, separation temperature, and pH of the aqueous phase, were investigated for racemic phenylalanine. Altogether, we tried to enantioseparate 15 racemic α-amino acids by the analytical countercurrent chromatography, of which only five of them could be successfully enantioseparated. Different elution sequence for phenylalanine enantiomer was observed compared with traditional liquid chromatography and the proposed interactions between chiral ligand, transition metal ion (Cu²⁺ ), and enantiomer are discussed.