Greenness assessment of developed derivative spectrophotometric method for simultaneous determination of ascorbic acid and folic acid in pharmaceutical formulation

Abstract

Abstract A simple, precise, green, and white analytical procedure have been developed for the simultaneous estimation of ascorbic acid and folic acid with the aid of the zero-crossing first derivative spectrophotometric technique. The standard solutions of ascorbic acid and folic acid were prepared in phosphate buffer (pH = 7). At the zero crossing points of folic acid (249.6 and 281) nm, ascorbic acid showed a measurable amplitude of the peak-to-baseline and linear over the concentration ranges of (0.17–12.0) µg/mL and (0.37–12) µg/mL with detection limits of 0.057 µg/mL and 0.121 µg/mL, respectively, while folic acid displayed an observable amplitude of the peak-to-baseline method at the zero-crossing point of ascorbic acid (265.6 nm), with (0.26–15.0) µg/mL and a detection limit of 0.088 µg/mL. The greenness of the proposed method was assessed based on white analytical chemistry (WAC), analytical greenness (AGREE), and green analytical procedure index (GAPI). The method was successfully applied for the simultaneous determination of ascorbic acid and folic acid in pharmaceutical formulation and synthetic laboratory mixtures with reasonable precision, accuracy, and recovery.