Yes, you can use florasil for column chromatography.

I'd consider another option as well. You can go to 100% methanol on silica so long as the mobile phase is neutral or acidic (don't use ammonium hydroxide or other basic modifiers in highly polar solvent systems on silica- this will dissolve the silica). You can also consider silica HILIC, aqueous normal phase on silica. Pack your column in methanol, ethanol, or acetonitrile containing 1-2% water. Load your sample as a plug (dry-loaded adsorbed on silica- as described by Dr. Dubey above) and run a step gradient with the solvent you used when packing, followed by 5, 10, 15, 20, 30...to 50% water in your organic solvent.

This is a variation, for a glass column, of the method I use for automated flash columns.

See Figure 5, and surrounding text, for the following poster: http://www.isco.com/WebProductFiles/Applications/101/Poster_and_Paper_Reprints/Strategies_for_the_Flash_Purification_of_Highly_Polar_Compounds.pdf

Also see Figures 3 & 4, and surrounding text, in this app note: http://www.isco.com/WebProductFiles/Applications/101/Application_Notes/AN84_RediSep_Rf_Gold_Silica_and_Highly_Polar_Solvents.pdf

I do work for Teledyne, and some of our customers have achieved successful purification of nucleosides with this technique.

Perhaps you mean florIsil, since florAsil is an anti-ageing cosmetics :-) I would say that florisil is quite similar to silica as it is just MgO on silica (~15:85). It is good for separating hydrophobic compounds like lipids and aromatics, but I don’t think that it will be good for polar nucleosides. However, I would suggest a little-known way of using a common silica gel – you can add some water to your mobile phase, and it will significantly deactivate silica and thus improve the mobility of nucleosides. There are several systems. You can use e.g. the mixture of water-saturated chloroform or DCM with methanol; the mixture of acetone with water or acetone-CHCl3-water; or acetonitrile-water. Eluent composition should be adjusted to get good mobility and separation. For example, acetonitrile-water ratio can be in the range 10/1 to 4/1. It works well with nucleosides. If you use a mixture with high water content you need to wash your silica column with at least 5 volumes of this eluent before loading your sample – to remove some water-soluble impurities from your silica support. In case of water-saturated CHCl3-MeOH it is much less critical since there will be only ~1% of H2O.

I have forgotten to add one more thing that may be useful. Perhaps you know how to apply on silica (or other support) a compound insoluble in solvent to be used for chromatography. If no – dissolve your material in any solvent where it is soluble (including e.g. DMF), mix it with silica (say 20 g silica per 1 g of your sample) and evaporate this mixture to dryness on a rotary evaporator. Then put the obtained dry silica with absorbed sample on the top of silica column, and run chromatography in a solvent system of your choice. Very helpful thing in nucleoside separations.

Yes, you can use florasil for column chromatography.

I'd consider another option as well. You can go to 100% methanol on silica so long as the mobile phase is neutral or acidic (don't use ammonium hydroxide or other basic modifiers in highly polar solvent systems on silica- this will dissolve the silica). You can also consider silica HILIC, aqueous normal phase on silica. Pack your column in methanol, ethanol, or acetonitrile containing 1-2% water. Load your sample as a plug (dry-loaded adsorbed on silica- as described by Dr. Dubey above) and run a step gradient with the solvent you used when packing, followed by 5, 10, 15, 20, 30...to 50% water in your organic solvent.

This is a variation, for a glass column, of the method I use for automated flash columns.

See Figure 5, and surrounding text, for the following poster: http://www.isco.com/WebProductFiles/Applications/101/Poster_and_Paper_Reprints/Strategies_for_the_Flash_Purification_of_Highly_Polar_Compounds.pdf

Also see Figures 3 & 4, and surrounding text, in this app note: http://www.isco.com/WebProductFiles/Applications/101/Application_Notes/AN84_RediSep_Rf_Gold_Silica_and_Highly_Polar_Solvents.pdf

I do work for Teledyne, and some of our customers have achieved successful purification of nucleosides with this technique.