Peak Area Ratio of racimic mixture

[jan]

I am running a chiral separation. The racimic mixture is well separated. When I integrate this two peak areas, I found the area ratio is not at 1:1 while it supposes to be at 1:1 ratio. What I got is 58% vs.42%. Any explanation for that? Thanks for your input.

[tom jupille]

Hard to tell without more information, but I can think of at least a couple of possibilities:

- your results are accurate, and your sample is not really racemic (check the optical rotation to confirm?)

- if your peaks are not baseline resolved and/or if they tail, you may be looking at integration errors.