Copper carbonate as a solid-bed reactor for spectrophotometric determination of doxycycline and oxytetracycline in an unsegmented continuous flow assembly.

The FIA-spectrophotometric determination of doxycycline was carried out by reaction of the drug with cupric ions entrapped in a polymeric material in a packed-bed reactor: the complex formed was then injected into a manifold with an alkaline solution as carrier. The developed colour was monitored at 395.0 nm. The method was applied to the determination of doxycycline in different pharmaceutical formulations. The calibration graph for doxycycline hyclate was linear over the range 10.0-80.0 mg ml-1 (n = 8) with a relative standard deviation of 1.4% (at 25 mg ml-1) and a sample throughput of 128 h-1. The proposed procedure was also applied to the determination of oxytetracycline in pharmaceutical formulations.