Simultaneous determination of phenylglycidol enantiomers and cinnamyl alcohol in asymmetric epoxidation processes by chiral liquid chromatography

A high-performance liquid chromatographic method has been developed for the simultaneous determination of phenylglycidol enantiomers and cinnamyl alcohol (CA). Separations were achieved on an amylose tris(3, 5-dymethylphenylcarbamate) chiral stationary phase (Chiralpak AD). The effect of concentration of organic modifier (2-propanol and ethanol) in the mobile phase and flow-rate was studied. The mobile phase selected consisted of a mixture of n-hexane–ethanol (85:15, v/v) with a flow-rate of 1.2 ml/min. The UV–vis detector was set at 254 nm. Resolution for the phenylglycidol enantiomers in the suitable chromatographic conditions was 2.4 with an analysis time of 12 min. The method developed was validated and was found to be linear in the range from 5 × 10−4 to 3 × 10−2 M, for phenylglycidol enantiomers and in the range from 5 × 10−5 to 1 × 10−3 M, for CA (r > 0.999 for the three compounds). Repeatability and intermediate precision for the three analytes at three different concentrations were below 3.6 and 2.8% R.S.D., respectively. This method has been applied to study the asymmetric epoxidation of CA with titanium(IV) alkoxide compounds as catalysts in order to evaluate their catalytic activity and stereoselectivity of the epoxidation processes.