Simultaneous Determination of Ascorbic Acid, Pseudoephedrine Hydrochloride and Ibuprofen in their Combined Tablets Using Micellar Liquid Chromatography

An accurate, simple, sensitive, and selective micellar liquid chromatographic method has been developed for the simultaneous determination of ascorbic acid, pseudoephedrine hydrochloride, and ibuprofen in their combined tablets. Separation was conducted using an ODS C18 (150 × 4.6 mm id) stainless steel column at ambient temperature with UV-detection at 260 nm. A mobile phase composed of 30 mM sodium dodecyl sulphate, 8% 1-propanol, 0.3% tri-ethylamine in 0.02 M phosphoric acid, and adjusted to pH 3 has been used at a flow rate of 1 mL/min. The calibration curves were rectilinear over the concentration ranges of 1.5–18.0, 1.0–10.0, and 3.0–30.0 µg/mL for ascorbic acid, pseudoephedrine hydrochloride, and ibuprofen, respectively. The detection limits (LOD) of the aforementioned drugs were 1.0, 0.05, and 2.2 µg/mL, and quantification limits (LOQ) were 1.4, 1.2, and 3.2 µg/mL respectively. The results obtained were in good agreement with those obtained by the comparison method. Furthermore, the method was applied for content uniformity testing.