Spectrophotometric determination of adrenaline in pharmaceutical preparations using Prussian blue reaction

Abstract

A simple ,sensitive and accurate spectrophotomeric method for the determination of adrenaline in pharmaceutical dosage forms has been developed. The method is based on the reaction of adrenaline with Fe+3 ion to produce Fe+2 which is upon further reaction with Potassium hexacynoferrate(III) to produce a Prussian blue color product that has a maximum absorption at λmax=700nm.A graph of absorbance versus concentration shows that beer law is obeyed over the range 0.1-2.0 p.p.m with a molar absorpitivity of ( 7.13x104 l.mole-1.cm-1) ,a sandall sensitivity of( 2.56x10-6 µg.cm-2) ,correlation coefficient of 0.9990 , a relative standard deviation of ( 0.12-1.36%) and detection limit of 0.017µg.ml-1 depending on the concentration. The optimum conditions for full color development are described and the proposed method was applied satisfactorily to pharmaceutical preparations containing adrenaline.