Colorimetric Determination of Salbutamol Sulfate using Spectrophotometry-Continuous Flow Injection Technique in Pure and Pharmaceutical Forms

Simple, precise and economic batch and flow injection analysis (FIA)-spectrophotometric methods have been established for simultaneous determination of salbutamol sulfate (SLB) in bulk powder and pharmaceutical forms. Both methods based on diazotization coupling reaction of SLB with another drug compound (sulfadimidine) as a safe and green diazotization agent in alkaline medium. At 444 nm, the maximum absorption of the orange azo-dye product was observed. A thorough investigation of all chemical and physical factors was conducted for batch and FIA procedures to achieve high sensitivity. Under the optimized experimental variables, SLB obeys Beer’s law in the concentration range of 0.25-4 and 10-100 μg/mL with limits of detection of 0.09 and 2.51 μg/mL for batch and FIA procedures respectively. The low percentage relative standard deviation of less than 1% (n=5) for both methods confirmed the applicability of these methods. Using F and t tests, a statistical comparison of the recommended approaches with the standard spectrophotometric method revealed no significant differences in accuracy or precision.