Quantitative determination of enantiomeric alcohols by planar chromatography on tribenzoylcellulose

In previous work [1] hand-made tribenzoylcellulose (CTB) layers developed with ethanol–water and n-hexane–2-propanol mixtures were successfully used for separation of the enantiomers of aromatic alcohols. The alcohols were detected by exposing the plates to iodine vapor for 24 h. This method of visualization does not enable quantitative determination of solutes, because spot intensity quickly decreases as a consequence of iodine vaporization. The intense UV adsorption of the CTB stationary phase, on the other hand, makes it very difficult to detect analytes which adsorb in the same wavelength range. It is, therefore, of great interest to use such chiral plates for the direct resolution and quantitative determination of solutes, e.g. thiochromanol and closely related benzoins, which adsorb strongly at wavelengths where the adsorption of the stationary phase is negligible.