Spectrophotometric determination of metronidazole in pharmaceutical pure and dosage forms using p-benzoquinone

A simple and accurate spectrophotometric method for the determination of metronidazole in pure and pharmaceutical dosage forms has been developed. The proposed method is based on the reduction of the nitro group to amino group of the drug. This can be achieved by heating a mixture of an alcoholic solution of metronidazole, zinc powder and dilute hydrochloric acid in a water bath at 90 ± 5 °C for 15 min. The cold and clear filtrate reacts with p-benzoquinone to develop a purple color, which absorbs maximally at 526 nm. The calibration graph is linear over the concentration range of 15–190 μg ml^?1 with a molar absorptivity of 1.09 × 10³ l mol^?1 cm^?1. The proposed method is applied to commercially available pharmaceutical dosage forms and the results are statistically compared with those obtained by the reference method.