Sensitive determination of phenothiazines in pharmaceutical preparation and biological fluid by flow injection chemiluminescence method using luminol–KMnO4 system

A flow injection chemiluminescence method was described for the determination of four phenothiazine drugs, namely, chlorpromazine hydrochloride, perphenazine hydrochloride, fluphenazine hydrochloride and thioridazine hydrochloride. Strong Chemiluminescence (CL) signal was produced when above-mentioned drug was injected into the mixed stream of luminol with KMnO4. The linear ranges of the method were 0.0020–1.0 μg/mL chlorpromazine hydrochloride, 0.0040–3.0 μg/mL perphenazine hydrochloride, 0.0020–5.0 μg/mL fluphenazine hydrochloride and 0.0050–1.0 μg/mL thioridazine hydrochloride. The detection limits were 0.4 ng/mL chlorpromazine hydrochloride, 0.7 ng/mL perphenazine hydrochloride, 2 ng/mL fluphenazine hydrochloride and 0.7 ng/mL thioridazine hydrochloride. The proposed method was applied to the determination of chlorpromazine hydrochloride in injections and in mental patient's urine samples and the satisfactory results were achieved. The possible CL reaction mechanism was also discussed briefly.