Determination of some estrogens by flow injection analysis with acidic potassium permanganate-formaldehyde chemiluminescence detection

A novel flow injection chemiluminescence (CL) method for the fast, simple and sensitive determination of three estrogens, namely dienestrol, diethylstilbestrol and hexestrol, has been investigated. It is based upon the CL reaction of the studied estrogens with formaldehyde (HCHO) and potassium permanganate (KMnO4) in sulfuric acid (H2SO4) medium. Under the optimum conditions, the linear range for the determination of estrogens were 8.00 × 10−9 to 8.00 × 10−6 g ml−1 for dienestrol, 5.00 × 10−9 to 4.75 × 10−6 g ml−1 for diethylstilbestrol, and 2.00 × 10−8 to 5.00 × 10−6 g ml−1 for hexestrol. The detection limits (S/N = 3) were 2.61 × 10−9 g ml−1 for dienestrol, 1.08 × 10−9 g ml−1 for diethylstilbestrol and 6.28 × 10−9 g ml−1 for hexestrol. The proposed method has been successfully applied to the determination of the studied estrogens in tablets and tap water. Furthermore, the possible reaction mechanism was also discussed in this paper.