Flow-injection spectrophotometric determination of ascorbic acid in pharmaceutical products with the Prussian Blue reaction.

A lot of modern analytical strategies for exploiting chemistries have been developed by using flow-injection analysis. However, even after 20 years of flow-injection evolution, there still are new quantitative procedures being established using old qualitative assays. The formation of Prussian Blue is a classical test to detect Fe(2+) using hexacyanoferrate(III) as a precipitating reagent. This reaction was evaluated for spectrophotometric determination of ascorbic acid employing Fe(3+) and hexacyanoferrate(III) as chromogenic reagents. An excess of the complexing anion avoids the formation of precipitate and forms a deep blue solution when Fe(3+) is reduced to Fe(2+) by ascorbic acid. The maximum absorbance of the colored complex occurs at 700 nm and the molar absorptivity is 3.0 x 10(4) 1 mol(-1) cm(-1). Under flow-injection conditions the Prussian Blue reaction was employed with an intermittent flow of an oxalate alkaline solution for removing the colored product adsorbed on tube and flow-cell walls. Reference solutions containing 5.0 x 10(-6)-1.0 x 10(-4) M of ascorbic acid were employed to obtain the analytical curve (r = 0.9999). For all solutions the relative standard deviation was lower than 1.0% (n=10). Results obtained for ascorbic acid determination in pharmaceutical products (Cewin, Redoxon and Cebion) are in good agreement with those obtained by using a flow-injection procedure involving the reaction between triiodide and ascorbic acid. The sampling frequency is 140 h(-1) and only 430 microl of reagents is consumed in each determination.