Utility of copper(II) oxide as a packed reactor in flow injection assembly for rapid analysis of some angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors

A new simple, sensitive, rapid and precise flow injection (FI) procedure based on the formation of copper complexes with some angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors has been developed and evaluated for the analysis of lisinopril (LN), enalapril maleate (EP), ramipril (RP) and perindopril tert-butylamine (PD). In this method, samples were injected into a flowing stream of distilled-deionized water, carried through the packed reactor of CuO for derivatization followed by ultraviolet (UV) detection. The flow rate was 1.5 ml min⁻¹ and column temperature was ambient (25 °C). Lisinopril was injected directly into the flowing stream and the detector response was measured at 262 nm. The hydrolysis products of enalapril maleate, ramipril and perindopril tert-butylamine in 0.2N NaOH were injected after neutralization with 1N HCl and the detector response was measured at 272, 265 and 252 nm, respectively. The developed method was successfully applied to the determination of tested drugs in pharmaceutical preparations at a sampling rate of 60 samples h⁻¹ and a recovery near 100% for all compounds.