Abstract:

Due to some advantages such as high precision, high efficiency and low consumption of organic solvents, chromatographic separation technique by simulated moving bed (SMB) has attracted considerable attention in the past decades. Herein, the enantioseparation of metalaxyl racemate on EnantioPak OD columns has been carried out by SMB chromatography with the mixture of hexane-ethanol (70 : 30, v/v). The elution order of two metalaxyl enantiomers under current chromatographic conditions was determined by HPLC with the optical rotation detector. Then, the influence of running parameters, such as the concentration, flow rate and switch time on the resolution of metalaxyl racemate has been studied in detail. In addition, the separation results from SMB and the preparative chromatography have been compared under the same concentrations. The results showed that the retention of S-(+)-metalaxyl was weaker than R-(-)-metalaxyl and S-(+)-metalaxyl was eluted first. Most importantly, metalaxyl racemate was well separated by SMB chromatography under linear or non-linear conditions, and the purity of each enantiomer product was over 99%. Furthermore, the amount separated by SMB was much more than by the preparative chromatography with racemate concentration of 15 mg/mL, and the mobile phase consumption was one-ninth of the latter. In brief, these results provide us important information for the future development of large-scale chromatographic separation of metalaxyl enantiomers.

Key words: chiral separation, elution order, elution volume approach, metalaxyl, simulated moving bed (SMB) chromatography