Multicomponent analysis of a ternary mixture of paracetamol, ibuprofen and caffeine in Novafen capsules with the aid of chemometrics

Net analyte signal standard addition method (NASSAM) has been presented for the simultaneous determination of paracetamol, ibuprofen and caffeine by spectrophotometry. The method combines the advantages of the standard addition method with the net analyte signal concept which enables the extraction of information concerning a certain analyte from spectra of multi-component mixtures. This method has some advantages such as the use of a full spectrum realization in determination step, therefore, it does not require calibration and prediction steps and only a few measurements are required for the determination. The simultaneous determination of paracetamol, ibuprofen and caffeine was performed in Britton-Robinson buffer (pH 10.0). Three pharmaceutical compounds were determined in concentration ranges of 0.4-320 mu mol L-1, 0.4-240 mu mol L-1 and 0.4-260 mu mol L-1 respectively. For study the accuracy of the proposed method, NASSAM has been successfully applied to the simultaneous determination of pharmaceutical compounds in some synthetic and pharmaceutical formulations (Novafen capsules) with the recoveries in the range of 84.3-108.7% with the RSD (%) of 0.43-3.9%.