Use of ion-selective electrodes in kinetic flow injection: determination of phenolic and hydrazino drugs with 1-fluoro-2,4-dinitrobenzene using a fluoride-selective electrode.

A flow injection (FI) kinetic potentiometric method for the determination of phenolic (acetaminophen and isoxsuprine) and hydrazino (isoniazid) drugs is described. This work shows the usefulness of ion-selective electrodes as detectors in FI systems, not only for direct ion determination but also in routine kinetic analysis. The method is based on the reaction of 1-fluoro-2,4-dinitrobenzene (FDNB) with the analytes in a weakly alkaline medium, which proceeds through the liberation of fluoride from the reagent. The slow reactions with phenols are catalysed by micelles of cetyltrimethylammonium bromide. The reaction rate is monitored with a fluoride-selective electrode in a wall-jet configuration and is used to construct a calibration graph of antilog(delta E/S)-1 versus c (where E = potential, s = slope of the electrode and c = concentration), using the fixed-time approach. The response time and the long-term stability of the electrode were found to be adequate for such kinetic determinations. The proposed method overcomes problems associated with end-point spectrophotometric methods using FDNB and allows measurements in highly coloured or turbid solutions. The optimized method has a linear concentration range of 1 x 10(-4)-50 x 10(-4) mol dm-3, a measurement throughput of 20 or 40 per hour and the precision ranges from 1.8 to 3.6% relative standard deviation (n = 3). Results obtained for commercial pharmaceutical formulations compare favourably with those given by reference methods.