Spectrophotometric determination of selected cephalosporins in drug formulations using flow injection analysis

A sensitive, accurate and rapid flow injection analysis (FIA) method for the determination of cefotaxime, cefuroxime, ceftriaxone, cefaclor, cefixime, ceftizoxime, and cephalexin is proposed. Aliquots of each cephalosporin were hydrolyzed for 15 min with 0.1 M NaOH at 80 degrees C and then oxidized with Fe3+ in sulfuric acid medium to produce Fe2+. The produced Fe2+ is then complexed by o-phenanthroline (o-phen) in citrate buffer at pH 4.2 to form the red complex, Fe(o-phen)3(2+), which exhibits an absorption maximum at 510 nm. Variables such as acidity, reagent concentrations, flow rate of reagents and other FI parameters were optimized to produce the most sensitive and reproducible results. The method was successfully applied to the analysis of pharmaceutical preparations. The results have been compared with those obtained using the official methods. Excellent agreement between the results of the proposed method and the official methods was obtained.