Chiral Separations

The most abundantly used route toward enantiopure chemical and biological products is through chiral separation of racemates. Several methods are available, of which crystallization is most used in industry, and chromatography is the most common analytical technique. The frequent use of crystallization in industrial applications is because of the relative cheapness of the technology and its maturity. Chiral chromatography is also a mature technology and very broadly applicable. Probably any racemate can be separated by means of chromatography, for which reason it is the most commonly applied technique for analytical purposes. Because it might be difficult to find a crystallizing agent, and because chromatography is expensive on large scale, several other techniques such as electrophoresis, liquid-liquid extraction, membrane-assisted separations, inclusion distillation, and inclusion precipitation have been developed. All these technologies are covered in this article.