Question

1. Select an appropriate type of column for separating these steroids and give the rationale for your selection. HO HO ОН OH Prednisolone Prednisone

Answer 1

1. The answer is non polar type column like C18

These compounds are having 3 and 2 OH groups which makes them highly polar. So if you are using normal phase chromatography, having silica gel stationary phase column. There would be too strong interactions, and you will get no separation from column

In this case you need to operate with reverse phase chromatogrpahy, in which columns are made of non polar stationary phase like C18, in these silica gel is bounded by hydrophobic C18 carbon atom chain.

Thus there would not be interactions between our polar steroids and non polar column. Therefore very good separation you would observe from column chromatography.