Recycling high-speed countercurrent chromatography for separation of taxol and cephalomannine

A mixture of taxol and cephalomannine was subjected to recycling countercurrent chromatography (CCC) which allows the use of the same column for repetitive separation of the peak fractions to improve the peak resolution. When the total amount of 50 mg of the two components was recycled twice, peak resolution (R-s) increased from 0.7 to 1.27. The results also showed that R, value increases according to the formula: Rs-n = n(1/2)R(s-1) where n is the number of CCC runs, and Rs-1 and Rs-n, peak resolutions after the first and the nth run, respectively.