An efficient and economical lowpressure liquid chromatography process has been developed for paclitaxel recovery and purification directly from planttissue culture PTC broth. PTC broth is first diluted with ethanol to ensure padlitaxel dissolution and then passed through a column packed with a highcapacity polystyrene divinylbenzene sorbent. A step increase in ethanol concentration in the mobile phase ethanol:water is used to concentrate and compress the taxane bands to as high as 29fold of influent concentrations about 1 mgL. A recycle technique is then used to separate the concentrated paclitaxel band from other taxane bands, achieving 95 purity with more than 90 recovery and 99 purity with more than 80 recovery. In this process, the same lowpressure columns are used to capture, concentrate and purify paclitaxel. Theoretical predictions agree closely with the stepwise elution and recycle chromatography data. After validation, simulations are used to explore various design and operating alternatives. Analysis of the alternatives shows that the process cost can be further reduced by using higher feed concentration, larger loading volume, smaller particle size, and optimal gradient and recycle strategies.