Quantitation of pharmaceutically important phenothiazines by oxidimetry

A new spectrophotometric method for the assay of phenothiazines in pure form as well as in pharmaceutical formulations with the chromium(VI)-metol-sulfanilic acid system has been developed. The method is based on the oxidation of the drugs by a known excess of chromium(VI) and subsequent determination of the unreacted oxidant by interacting with metol and sulfanilic acid. The reacted oxidant corresponds to the drug content. The coloured species exhibits maximum absorbance at 530 nm. Beer's law is obeyed over the concentration range 5-60 micrograms ml-1 and the relative standard deviation is found to be less than 2%. The apparent molar absorptivities are in the range 3.77 x 10(3)-3.98 x 10(3) l mol-1 cm-1, the detection limits being in the range 0.6133-1.1349 micrograms ml-1. The method was successfully applied to the determination of the studied drugs in their formulations and the mean percentage recoveries were found to be 97.32-102.80%.