Multicommuted flow system employing pinch solenoid valves and micro-pumps: Spectrophotometric determination of paracetamol in pharmaceutical formulations

A multicommuted spectrophotometric flow-based procedure for the determination of paracetamol in pharmaceutical formulations is proposed. The method is based on the reaction of paracetamol with sodium hypochlorite forming N-acetyl-p-benzoquinoneimine, which reacts with sodium salicylate in alkaline medium producing a blue indophenol dye that was measured at 640 nm. The flow system was designed employing four pinch solenoid valves and two solenoid micro-pumps, which were assembled aiming to obtain a compact module, resulting in minimization of reagents consumption and waste generation. Aiming to prove the usefulness of flow system an analytical procedure for paracetamol determination in pharmaceutical formulations was developed. To allow accuracy assessment samples were also analyzed using the AOAC reference method. Applying the paired t-test between results no significant difference at the 95% confidence level was observed. Other profitable features such as a linear response ranging from 5.0 to 125.0 mg l−1 (R = 0.9992, n = 7), a sampling rate of 60 determinations per hour, a detection limit of 0.4 mg l−1 paracetamol, a relative standard deviation of 1.5% (n = 11) for a typical sample solution containing 25.0 mg l−1 paracetamol, reagent consumption of 1.28 mg sodium hypochlorite and 6.4 mg sodium salicylate per determination were also achieved.