Determination of dipyrone in pharmaceutical products by flow injection analysis with potentiometric detection

This work describes an FIA potentiometric procedure for the quantification of dipyrone in pharmaceutical products. For the detector, a tubular electrode comprising a polymeric membrane containing tetraoctylammonium as an electroactive material (5% w/w), dibutylphtalate as a mediator solvent (65% w/w) and PVC (30% w/w) directly applied above a graphite conductor support was used. This unit was incorporated into a monochannel FI-system with a 0.1 mol/L phosphate buffer solution (pH = 5.2) as the carrier solution. The electrode showed a linear response from 8.0 x 10(-4) to 10(-1) mol/L dipyrone, a slope of 62.1 +/- 0.2 mV/dec in pH 5.2 units, an injection volume of 500 microL and a carrier flow-rate of 6 mL/min. This procedure was applied to the analysis of pharmaceutical formulations (oral and injectable) containing dipyrone; the obtained results gave a relative error of less than 3.9% and coefficients of variation less than 1% and 5%, respectively, for the FIA and classical iodometric methods.