Using on-line solid phase extraction for flow-injection spectrophotometric determination of salbutamol

In the proposed procedure, the determination of salbutamol with Folin-Ciocalteau reagent (FC) using a flow injection analysis technique (FIA) with spectrophotometric detection at 750 nm is described. The lab-made FIA system consisted of a peristaltic pump Gilson Minipulse 3 equipped with Tygon tubes, double 6-port external Vici Valco sample injector and S 2000/SAD500 fiber optic spectrophotometer. It was controlled by a PC with use of originally compiled LabVIEW^®—supported software containing the mathematical library with various statistical functions for off-line data evaluation. Concentration, volume of reagents and flow rate were optimised by a simplex method. The proposed system was used for the direct determination of salbutamol sulphate in the tablets and the human urine without preliminary pre-treatment of the sample. The negative effect of interfering substances (excipients of the tablets and matrix of the urine) is overcome by a solid phase extraction (SPE), when salbutamol is adsorbed on the solid phase in the microcolumn, which is integrated directly into the flow system. Pre-treatment of the sample takes place directly in the flowing stream. The sample throughput without carryover of on-line SPE was 60-80 samples per hour. With the SPE column (Baker—carboxylic acid), salbutamol was determined in the linear range from 1 to 15 μg ml⁻¹ (R.S.D.=1.2%), with detection limit (3σ) 0.1 μg ml⁻¹ and a frequency of 40-60 samples per hour in the water solutions. The salbutamol was determined in the linear range from 2 to 20 μg ml⁻¹ (R.S.D.=1.7%), with detection limit (3σ) 1 μg ml⁻¹ and a frequency of 30 samples per hour in the samples of the human urine.