Separation of some amino acids by supercritical fluid chromatography after a pre-derivatization step with classical reagents

Abstract

The separation of polar compounds by supercritical fluid chromatography is a difficult problem to solve. In this work, we have used a pre-derivatization method to obtain apolar or less polar compounds. Amino acids have been chosen as model polar compounds of biological interest, and 9-fluorenylmethyl chloroformate (FMOC) and (+)-1-(9-fluorenyl)ethyl chloroformate (FLEC) have been used as derivatizating reagents. With this procedure, the amino acids studied have been separated in less than 40 minutes with a good efficiency. Furthermore, with FLEC reagent, the enantiomeric separation was rapid in comparison with liquid chromatography techniques and the selectivities obtained were in the same order of magnitude.