Enantioseparation of chiral mandelic acid derivatives by supercritical fluid chromatography

Mandelic acid and its derivatives are important chiral analogs which are widely used in the pharmaceutical synthetic industry. The present study investigated the enantiomeric separation of six mandelic acids (mandelic acid, 2-chloromandelic acid, 3-chloromandelic acid, 4-chloromandelic acid, 4-bromomandelic acid, 4-methoxymandelic acid) on the Chiralpak AD-3 column by supercritical fluid chromatography. The influences of volume fraction of trifluoroacetic acid, type and percentage of modifier, column temperature, and backpressure on the separation efficiency were investigated. And the enantiomer elution order was determined. The results show that, for a given modifier, the retention factor, the separation factor, and the separation resolution decreased gradually with increasing the volume ratio of the modifier. At the same volume ratio of modifier, the retention factor of the mandelic acid and its derivatives increased in the order of methanol, ethanol, and isopropanol, except 3-chloromandelic acid. The separation factor and the separation resolution decreased with the increase of column temperature (below the temperature limit). The backpressure affected the enantioseparation process: As the backpressure increased, a corresponding decrease in retention factor was observed. Under the same chiral column conditions, the SFC method exhibited faster and more efficient separation with better enantioselectivity than the HPLC method.