Analytical Sciences

Flow Injection Spectrophotometric Determination of Tetracycline in a Pharmaceutical Preparation by Complexation with Aluminium(III)

Saisunee LIAWRUANGRATH,* Boonsom LIAWRUANGRATH,** Surasak WATANESK,* and Wirat RUENGSITAGOON***

*Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Sciences, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, 50200, Thailand
**Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Faculty of Phamacy, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, 50200, Thailand
***Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Khon Kaen University, Khon Kaen, 40002, Thailand

A rapid flow injection (FI) spectrophotometric procedure for tetracycline determination is described. It is based on the injection of a 100 µl sample solution containing tetracycline into merged streams of aluminium(III) chloride (0.01 mol l^-1) and Tris-buffer in the presence of KCl (0.06 mol l^-1), pH 7.0, with the same optimum flow rate of 3.2 ml min^-1. A yellow Al(III)-tetracycline complex was monitored at 376 nm. The flow injection system and the experimental conditions were optimized by means of the univariate method. The procedure was applied to the determination of tetracycline in pharmaceutical preparations with a high sampling rate of at least 165 h^-1. A high precision with a relative standard deviation was obtained less than 0.72 and 0.30% of 5.0 and 10 µg ml^-1 (n = 11), respectively. The detection limit (3 σ) and the quantification limit (10 σ) were 0.07 and 0.72 mg l^-1, respectively. There were no interference effects from traditional excipients in the dosage forms when the method was applied to pharmaceutical preparations. The matrix effect could be reduced by the standard addition method.

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