Trimipramine determination in pharmaceutical preparations with an automated multicommutated reversed-flow system

In this work an automated multicommutated flow methodology was implemented for the spectrophotometric determination of trimipramine in pharmaceutical preparations by oxidation with ammonium monovanadate in acidic medium. The developed procedure exploits a new approach for sample/reagent intermixing by combining binary sampling with flow-reversal. Rather than inserting the sample as a single continuous volume the intercalation of multiple small sample and reagent aliquots, under a time-based control, created multiple reaction interfaces that promoted reaction zone homogenisation even in limited dispersion conditions. Additionally, the reaction interfaces were reversed, increasing mutual zone penetration, which contributed to a faster reaction development while assuring a low dispersion pattern. A linear range of determination was verified for trimipramine concentrations between 1.0 and 18.0 microg ml(-1) with a relative standard deviation (n=10) lower than 1.69% and a sample throughput of about 26 samples per hour. The results were in agreement with those obtained by the reference procedure with relative deviations lower then 2.37%.