The continuous flow gradient and its effect on chromatographic parameters were investigated for the separations of inorganic anions on a monolithic porous disk with bonded hydroxyproline residues.The general definition of high-performance liquid chromatography assumes a maximum number of resolved chromatographic peaks in the shortest possible time. There are two main approaches to high-speed ion-chromatography (IC). One is the use of short columns (3-5 cm) packed with fine particles 1.5-3.0 µm in diameter. 1 A reasonable efficiency can be achieved with such columns in a short time, but a high backpressure does not allow a significant increase of the flow-rate of the eluent and hence a further decrease of the analysis time.Another possibility for achieving fast IC consists in the use of monoliths or continuous stationary phases. Monoliths have through pores, which result in a low backpressure, and mesopores providing a large surface area. The pores are highly interconnected and form a network of channels, 2 which allow a very large increase in flow-rate with little loss in efficiency, thus drastically reducing the time of analysis. For a monolithic column 5 cm in length with an internal diameter of 4.6 mm, the flow-rate can be increased up to 16 ml min -1 providing the separation of a mixture of anions in a minute. 3 Of course, gradient elution can also be used to reduce the time of chromatographic analysis. A rarely used alternative approach of flow programming has very limited applications in HPLC with packed columns because of a sharp increase of the backpressure, which limits the flow-rate to a relatively narrow range. 4,5 Note that a flow gradient can often be used only in tandem with a temperature gradient, 6,7 which diminishes the growth of backpressure.Schafer et al. 8 considered flow-gradient elution on monolithic silica-based Chromolith (Merck) columns with the use of a sharp increase in the flow rate to speed up the elution of one or two strongly retained peaks, which are widely separated from others on an isocratic chromatogram. The programming of flow-gradient elution for separation on monolithic columns could be more efficient. We studied the separations of inorganic anions on a chemically modified monolithic column with programmed flow gradients during the entire run.We used a Shimadzu LC-10AT pump (Germany) with programmed eluent flow rate, a Rheodyne 7125 injection valve (USA) and CD-510 conductivity detector (Aquilon, Moscow, Russia). The CIM ® (Convective Interaction Media) disk monolithic column consisted of a CIM ® Epoxy disk (thickness, 3 mm; diameter, 16 mm; active bed volume, 0.34 ml; macropore diameter, 1500 nm; mesopore diameter, 100 nm 9 ) and a CIM ® housing (BIA Separations, Slovenia).L-Hydroxyproline (Sigma) (pK 1 = 1.92; pK 2 = 9.73) was chosen as an ion-exchange functionality because of the tertiary nature of the amino group in the bonded state, which provides anion-exchange properties and high ion-exchange selectivity. 10,11 The attachment of L-hydroxyproline to the disk was perfo...