Comparison of chiral electrophoretic separation methods for phenethylamines and application on impurity analysis

A chiral microemulsion electrokinetic chromatography method has been developed for the separation of the enantiomers of the phenethylamines ephedrine, N-methylephedrine, norephedrine, pseudoephedrine, adrenaline (epinephrine), 2-amino-1-phenylethanol, diethylnorephedrine, and 2-(dibutylamino)-1-phenyl-1-propanol, respectively. The separations were achieved using an oil-in-water microemulsion consisting of the oil-component ethyl acetate, the surfactant sodium dodecylsulfate, the cosurfactant 1-butanol, the organic modifier propan-2-ol and 20 mM phosphate buffer pH 2.5 as aqueous phase. For enantioseparation sulfated β-cyclodextrin was added. The method was compared to an already described CZE method, which made use of heptakis(2,3-di-O-diacetyl-6-O-sulfo)-β-cyclodextrin (HDAS) as chiral selector. Additionally, the developed method was successfully applied to the related substances analysis of noradrenaline, adrenaline, dipivefrine, ephedrine and pseudoephedrine monographed in the European Pharmacopoeia 6.