High performance liquid chromatographic separation of sedimentary vanadyl porphyrins

A method of reversed phase HPLC gradient elution was developed and evaluated for the separation of vanadyl porphyrins. Separation was compared with the result of isocratic elution. It shows that gradient elution method is suitable for vanadyl porphyrin separation and better separation result can be obtained by gradient elution. Gradient elution improves the separation by changing the retention time of different components in the sample mixture and increases the difference of k' (capacity factor). Vanadyl porphyrin samples Bakken 6362', Treibs #1 and Treibs #3 were analyzed by this method. Results correlate very well with the results of mass spectrometry analysis of these samples which have been done by some other workers.