We report the procedure of sorting/purification of carbon nanotubes by electronic type using chromatographic column with sodium dodecylsulfate (SDS) and sodium deoxycholate (DOC) solutions as the eluents. The non-commercial agarose gel in different concentrations has been tested in the process. It was found that in optimal gel concentration the fractionation resulted in similar to 96.2% yield of semiconducting species. Importantly, to get surfactant-free fractions the post-separation purification procedure has been carried out. The UV-vis-NIR and Raman spectroscopy have been utilised for the samples analysis. High resolution transmission microscopy and thermogravimetric analysis allowed to study the sample morphology and purity, respectively. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.