Scientific Publications by FDA Staff

J Chromatogr A 2014 May 23;1343:91-100

Preparative separation of two subsidiary colors of FD&C Yellow No. 5 (Tartrazine) using spiral high-speed counter-current chromatography.

Weisz A, Ridge CD, Roque JA, Mazzola EP, Ito Y

Specifications in the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations for the color additive FD&C Yellow No. 5 (Color Index No. 19140) limit the level of the tetrasodium salt of 4-[(4',5-disulfo[1,1'-biphenyl]-2-yl)hydrazono]-4,5-dihydro-5-oxo-1-(4-sulfopheny l)-1H-pyrazole-3-carboxylic acid and that of the trisodium salt of 4,4'-[4,5-dihydro-5-oxo-4-[(4-sulfophenyl)hydrazono]-1H-pyrazol-1,3-diyl]bis[benz enesulfonic acid], which are subsidiary colors abbreviated as Pk5 and Pk7, respectively. Small amounts of Pk5 and Pk7 are needed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for confirmatory analyses and for development of analytical methods. The present study describes the use of spiral high-speed counter-current chromatography (HSCCC) to separate the closely related minor components Pk5 and Pk7 from a sample of FD&C Yellow No. 5 containing approximately 3.5% Pk5 and approximately 0.7% Pk7. The separations were performed with highly polar organic/high-ionic strength aqueous two-phase solvent systems that were chosen by applying the recently introduced method known as graphic optimization of partition coefficients (Zeng et al., 2013). Multiple approximately 1.0g portions of FD&C Yellow No. 5 (totaling 6.4g dye) were separated, using the upper phase of the solvent system 1-butanol/abs. ethanol/saturated ammonium sulfate/water, 1.7:0.3:1:1, v/v/v/v, as the mobile phase. After removing the ammonium sulfate from the HSCCC-collected fractions, these separations resulted in an enriched dye mixture ( approximately 160mg) of which Pk5 represented approximately 46% and Pk7, approximately 21%. Separation of the enriched mixture, this time using the lower phase of that solvent system as the mobile phase, resulted in approximately 61mg of Pk5 collected in fractions whose purity ranged from 88.0% to 92.7%. Pk7 (20.7mg, approximately 83% purity) was recovered from the upper phase of the column contents. Application of this procedure also resulted in purifying the major component of FD&C Yellow No. 5 to >99% purity. The separated compounds were characterized by high-resolution mass spectrometry and several 1H and 13C nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopic techniques.