Computerized optimization of the high-performance liquid chromatographic enantioseparation of a mixture of 4-dinitrophenyl amino acids on a quinine carbamate-type chiral stationary phase using DRYLAB

A method is proposed for the sensitive chiral analysis of amino acid enantiomers by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Thus the enantiomers of a mixture of seven racemic amino acids were resolved as their DNP derivatives from each other and from the peak of the hydrolyzed reagent, employing a quinine carbamate-based chiral anion exchange-type chiral stationary phase (CSP) and aqueous buffered mobile phases. However, the initial isocratic chromatogram yielded many peak overlaps although the corresponding enantiomers were well resolved. Therefore, the separation of the complex mixture had to be optimized; we utilized the commercial computer method development software DRYLAB. First, the influence of the manifold mobile phase parameters and chromatographic conditions (pH, type and content of organic modifier, buffer concentration, temperature, type of co-ion, etc.) on retention and resolution was studied by isocratic elution. Furthermore, with such optimized conditions linear and multi-segmented organic modifier and buffer salt gradients, respectively, were simulated with the computer program and experimentally verified. Average errors of prediction of retention times lay between 2 and 8%. Finally, a highly improved HPLC gradient method resulted in almost all components being baseline separated and equally spaced and accelerated by a factor of more than 3 compared to the initial run.