D(-)-tartaric acid is an important chiral pool of 4 carbon atoms. With the rapid development of chiral pharmaceuticals, chiral additives and chiral auxiliaries, D(-)-tartaric acid is more and more widely used in pharmaceuticals and food industry. It is also used as chiral pool or resolving agent for chiral synthesis.
When D(-)-tartaric acid or its derivatives is used to resolve amino acid, it has some advantages such as high reaction speed, high resolution ratio, and during the period of resolution, the dynamic process can be controlled and can oblige the amino acid to transform to the target configuration. So the yield always reaches 80%. Furthermore, D(-)-tartaric acid is easy to retrieve after resolution. The optical purity of the product is high and e.e% value can reach 99.9%.
In addition, D(-)-tartaric acid has also been widely used in synthesizing and manufacturing many kinds of chiral food additives including the resolution of a new functional nutriment -- L-carnitine, and some chiral pharmaceuticals.