Determination of chromatographic separation parameters of tryptophan enantiomers on a Chirosil-SCA chiral stationary phase by using the inverse method based on the initial guesses estimated from elution by characteristic point method.

An effective chiral stationary phase (CSP) for enantioseparation of amino acids was established previously by bonding (18-crown-6)-2, 3, 11, 12-tetracarboxylic acid to silica gel. This CSP has recently been commercialized under the name of Chirosil-SCA. As a first step for developing a Chirosil-SCA simulated moving bed chromatographic process for separation of tryptophan enantiomers, the adsorption isotherm and mass-transfer parameters of each tryptophan enantiomer on the Chirosil-SCA CSP were determined in this study while using only water as a mobile phase. For this task, inverse method (IM) was applied on the basis of the initial guesses estimated from elution by characteristic point (ECP) method, which was found to be more advantageous in the aspects of both accuracy and computational efficiency than the case of utilizing individually only IM or ECP method. The results revealed that the adsorption behavior of each tryptophan enantiomer on the Chirosil-SCA could be well described by the Langmuir-Freundlich isotherm. The model predictions based on the determined parameter values were in close agreement with the experimental chromatograms from a series of single-component or mixture pulse tests that were performed under various feed concentrations and flow rates. It was also found that the Langmuir-Freundlich isotherm parameters of each enantiomer were largely affected by temperature. Such a marked dependence of the parameters on temperature was investigated quantitatively. The results of such an investigation indicated that as the temperature decreases, the adsorption affinities of both enantiomers become higher and the heterogeneity of the Chirosil-SCA becomes more pronounced.