Supported liquid membrane separation of amine and amino acid derivatives with chiral esters of phosphoric acids as carriers Studies on the possible use of phosphate and phosphonate esters bearing chiral menthol or nopol moieties as carriers for the transport of amines, amino acids, and amino acid esters through supported liquid membranes (SLM) are presented. Additionally, the enantioselectivity of the SLM transport of alkyl esters of aromatic amino acids and a non-protein amino acid was also evaluated. It could be concluded that the extent of transport strongly depends on the hydrophobicity of the amino compound. Moreover, the carrier structure also influences the transport of those compounds through SLM: chiral phosphate and phosphonate esters appear to be poor or moderate carriers for enantioselective SLM transport of amino acids and their esters. The transport efficiency and selectivity is strongly dependent on the structure of both the transported compounds and the carrier. However, no meaningful relationship exists between these structural features and transportation or enantioselectivity.
IntroductionThe chirality of molecules plays a significant role in most chemical and biochemical processes. Thus, obtaining and identifying enantiopure compounds is a very important and often difficult goal. To this end methods of asymmetric synthesis, biotransformation, and chiral separation have been developed. Yet, chiral separation remains the most popular approach because it is relatively inexpensive, simple to carry out, and has reasonably low time demands.One of the techniques used for chiral separation exploits the properties of supported liquid membrane (SLM) [1]. Typically, the "heart" of this system is the liquid membrane formed by incorporating an organic solvent into a porous polymer. Such a membrane separates two aqueous phases, i. e. the donor (source) phase and the acceptor (receiving) phase [2].To obtain optimal conditions for chiral separation of enantiomeric organic compounds by SLM, extraction is usually achieved by incorporating a chiral selector into the hydrophobic liquid membrane phase or by using a chiral organic liquid as a membrane phase [3]. Various types of carrier molecules have been designed and used for this purpose. The most important group consists of macrocyclic compounds derived from crown ethers [4]. Other possibilities include the use of chiral complexes of transition metals [5], carriers with porphyrin or sapphyrin rings [6], macrocyclic pseudopeptides [7], chiral phosphoric acids esters [8], guanidine derivatives of sterols [9], or cinchonidine [10]. Although these carriers turned out to be more or less effective chiral selectors, their further application seems to be limited due to their moderate solubility in organic solvents. This prevents their use in high concentrations, which might offer the possibility of simultaneous separation and enrichment. The most important feature regarding enantioseparation is that only minute amounts of these expensive chiral carriers are required in...