Effect of Secondary Equilibria on the Adsorption of Ibuprofen Enantiomers on a Chiral Stationary Phase with a Grafted Antibiotic Eremomycin

Abstract

The chromatographic separation of ibuprofen enantiomers on a Nautilus-E chiral stationary phase with a grafted eremomycin antibiotic at high column loading is accompanied by distortion of the shape of chromatographic peaks. A model is proposed to explain this phenomenon. A number of factors are considered in the model: the ionization of ibuprofen in the mobile phase, the pH change in the mass transfer zone caused by ionization, and competitive adsorption involving buffer components. Simulations performed using this model within the theory of nonequilibrium chromatography allow the shape of chromatograms for large amounts of S- and R-ibuprofen samples to be predicted. The adsorption mechanism is found to be mainly ion-exchange. The contribution from the molecular adsorption of ibuprofen to the total retention is shown to be several percent.