Development of a Procedure Based on Chemiluminescence and Multicommutation Approach for the Determination of Folic Acid in Pharmaceuticals

This paper presents an analytical procedure for the determination of folic acid employing commutation flow analysis process and detection by chemiluminescence. The procedure is based on the reaction of hexacyanoferrate(III) with folic acid, followed of luminol oxidizing reaction in alkaline medium, resulting in emission of radiation at 425 nm. After optimization the experimental variables, the proposed procedure afforded the following useful features. A linear response ranging from 0.1 to 1.00 mg mL^-1 folic acid (R²= 0.993), a detection limit (3σ criterion) 0.046 mg mL^-1, a sampling rate of 156 determination per hour, a relative standard deviation less than 0.5% (n = 6) for a 0.6 mg mL^->1 folic acid standard solution and a waste generation of 0.86 mL per determination.

Keywords:
folic acid; multicommuted flow analysis; chemiluminescence; green chemistry