Determination of residual organic solvents in flunixin meglumine raw material by headspace gas chromatography

A method for the determination of five kinds of residual organic solvents in flunixin meglumine raw material was developed by headspace gas chromatography. An HP-FFAP capillary column (30 m x 0.32 mm x 1.0 mu m), a flame ionization detector and the external standard method were used for the separation and quantitative analysis. The effects of equilibrium temperature and equilibrium time on the determination of residual organic solvents were investigated. The good results were obtained in the equilibrium temperature of 90 degrees C and equilibrium time of 30 min. The standard curves were linear in the range of 0.40 - 7.93 mg/L (r = 0.999 8) for ethyl acetate, 7.32 - 146.48 mg/L (r = 0.999 6) for methanol, 4.53-90.61 mg/L (r = 0.999 9) for isopropanol, 3.62-72.32 mg/L (r = 0.999 8) for ethanol and 2.31 - 46.24 mg/L (r = 0.999 6) for acetonitrile. The recoveries for the five residual organic solvents were between 95.96% and 100.31% with relative standard deviations (RSDs) (n = 6) of 1.97% - 3.28%. The detection limits of ethyl acetate, methanol, isopropanol, ethanol and acetonitrile were 0.08, 0.9, 0.2, 0.4 and 0.3 mg/L, respectively. The proposed method was successfully applied to analyze the residual organic solvents in the real sample of flunixin meglumine raw material. The results showed that only isopropanol and ethanol were found in the sample with the contents of 177.44 mu g/g and 69.32 mu g/g, respectively. The method is rapid, sensitive and accurate for the content determination of residual solvents in flunixin meglumine raw material.