How does chiral Hplc work?

Answer 1

As a very crude analogy, think of a playground slide with dents in it that are the size and shape of a left shoe print. If we put some shoes at the top and let them slide down, the left shoes will be more likely to get stuck in the dents than the right shoes (which don't fit as well and therefore slide over them more easily).

Answer 2

Normal-phase HPLC, or Normal-phase high performance liquid chromatography, works the same way as liquid chromatography does:

It has a solid stationary phase of silica, a mobile phase of the solvent, and uses the principle of adsorption to separate components of the mixture. However, adaptations have been made to make this method a "high performance" one:

1) High pressures are applied so as to shorten elution times.

2) Silica particle size is far smaller than in liquid chromatography to increase adsorption rates.

Moreover, what we commonly use now is "Reverse-phase HPLC", which has liquid stationary and mobile phases and uses the principle of relative solubility to work.

I hope this helps! :)

Answer 3

Chiral HPLC (High-Performance Liquid Chromatography) separates enantiomers (mirror-image isomers) based on their interaction with a chiral stationary phase. The chiral stationary phase in the column interacts differently with each enantiomer, causing them to move at different rates through the column. This separation allows for the identification and quantification of individual enantiomers in a mixture.