Drug synthesis methods and manufacturing technology preparative chromatographic separation of ibuprofen enantiomers on Whelk-O1 chiral stationary phase

The influence of experimental conditions (temperature, sample volume, mobile-phase composition) on the preparative separation of ibuprofen enantiomers on chiral stationary phase (S,S)-Whelk-O1 with hexane: EtOH eluents modified with acetic acid was studied. It was established that the effects of these factors on the elution profiles were complex with the patterns disturbed by overlap with the systemic peak. The importance of the last factor decreased with increasing alcohol concentration in the mobile phase. The possibility of optimizing the preparative separation with respect to both purity and yield of the target enantiomers was discussed.