Rapid Chiral Separation by Flow-Through Chromatography with a Biporous Stationary Phase

Enantiomer separation is an area of increasing importance in chemistry and in the pharmaceutical industry. Although liquid chromatography is one of the most practical processes for chiral resolution, the high mass-transfer resistance of most commercially available packings makes chiral resolution time-consuming. In this work, a novel chiral stationary phase (CSP) with wide pores was prepared by coupling bovine serum albumin to a biporous resin with triazine as a linker. The rigid biporous medium was fabricated by radical suspension copolymerization with solid granules and solvents as porogenic agents. Studies by scanning electron microscopy and mercury intrusion porosimetry revealed the matrix contained two types of pore—micropores smaller than 180 nm and macropores of 500–7300 nm. Because the macropores provide convective flow channels for the mobile phase, the chromatographic process can be operated at high flow rate with low back-pressure. The biporous CSP was applied to the resolution of d, l-tryptophan (Trp). When the flow velocity was as high as 1800 cm h^–1, d, l-Trp could still be separated. By comparison of the resolution of d, l-Trp on this CSP at high flow velocities with that predicted theoretically for conventional supports we concluded that the increased flow velocity had little effect on the resolution of enantiomers with biporous packings. The results indicate that the protein biporous CSP is promising for high-speed resolution of enantiomers.Revised: 8 October 2004 and 3 January 2005