Simultaneous spectrophotometric determination of tartrazine, patent blue V, and indigo carmine in commercial products by partial least squares and principal component regression methods.

Two multivariate calibration methods, partial least squares (PLS-1) and principal component regression (PCR) were proposed and successfully applied to the simultaneous determination of three dyes, tartrazine (T) (E-102), patent blue V (P) (E-131), and indigo carmine (I) (E-132) in mixtures by ultraviolet-visible absorption spectrophotometry. Calibration models were evaluated by internal validation (prediction of dyes concentration in its own designed training set of calibration), by cross-validation (obtaining statistical parameters that show the efficiency for a calibration fit model), and by external validation over 19 synthetic mixtures of the three dyes in different ratios containing 2.4-17.6 mg l(-1) of T, 1.6-5.6 mg l(-1) of P, and 3.2-17.5 mg/l(-1) of I, with recoveries between 93.5 and 103.1% and over three commercial products, in which the proposed calibration models were satisfactorily applied without separation step. Repeatability and reproducibility studies (with the Students's and F tests) were achieved over two series of nine standards for each dye, showing no significant differences at 95% confidence level.