Photochemical derivatization and spectrophotometric determination of thioridazine by flow injection

Comparison between micellar liquid chromatography and capillary zone electrophoresis for the determination of hydrophobic basic drugs in pharmaceutical preparations

The determination of highly hydrophobic basic compounds by means of conventional reversed-phase liquid chromatographic methods has several drawbacks. Owing to the characteristics of micellar liquid chromatography (MLC) and capillary electrophoresis (CE), these techniques could be advantageous alternatives to reversed-phase chromatographic methods for the determination of these kinds of compounds. The objective of this study was to develop and compare MLC and CE methods for the determination of antipsychotic basic drugs (amitryptiline, haloperidol, perphenazine and thioridazine) in pharmaceutical preparations. The chromatographic determination of the analytes was performed on a Kromasil C(18) analytical column; the mobile phase was 0.04 m cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB), at pH 3, containing 5% 1-butanol, at a flow rate of 1 mL/min. The CE separation was performed in a fused-silica capillary with a 50 mm tris-(hydroxymethyl)-aminomethane buffer, pH 7, at an applied voltage of 20 kV, using barbital as internal stardard. The proposed methods are suitable for a reliable quantitation of these compounds in the commercial tablets and drops in terms of accuracy and precision and require a very simple pre-treatment of the samples. By comparing the performance characteristics and experimental details of the MLC and CE methods we conclude that CE seems to be slightly better than MLC in the determination of highly hydrophobic compounds in pharmaceuticals in terms of resolution and economy, taking into account that the limits of detection are not a handicap in pharmaceutical samples.

Reagent generation for chemical analysis assisted by ultrasonic irradiation

Few methods, such as coulometrics, have been developed to produce reagents in situ for analytical purposes. In this work the concept related to the generation of ultrasound-assisted reagents was exploited to yield oxidizing species in batch and flow systems of analysis. To evaluate the efficiency of ultrasound-assisted reagent generation, the conversion of Fe(2+) to Fe(3+) associated with the 1,10-o-phenantroline spectrophotometric method was tested to compare the oxidizing power of the produced species from pure water and aqueous solutions saturated with CCl(4) or CHCl(3) irradiated ultrasonic waves. Irradiation processes were conducted with an ultrasonic bath (40 kHz and 140 W). The borosilicate reactor was used in the batch studies, while the PTFE tube reactor was used for setting up the flow system, with the temperature during irradiation being controlled using a thermostatic bath. The sonochemical production of oxidizing agents was demonstrated to be efficient for chemical analysis in batch and flow systems. This technique was exemplified by oxidation of iodide and ferrous ions. It was observed that after 120 min of sonication approximately 40 microg of Fe(2+) was quantitatively oxidized to Fe(3+). Similar result was obtained by the irradiation of iodine in aqueous-organic medium.