Simultaneous determination of catecholamines by ion chromatography with direct conductivity detection

A simple method for simultaneous determination of three catecholamines using ion chromatography (IC) with direct conductivity detection (CD) based on the ionization of catecholamines in acidic medium without chemical suppression is developed in the present paper. The method could be used for the determination of these catecholamines in pharmaceutical preparations for the purpose of drug quality control. The recovery of catecholamines was more than 97% (n=3) and the relative standard deviation (R.S.D.) (n=11) was less than 2.1%. In a single chromatographic run, norepinephrine (NE), epinephrine (E) and dopamine (DA) can be determined in less than 10 min. The detection limits were found to be 0.001 μg/ml for NE, 0.01 μg/ml for E and DA respectively. Linear ranges were 0.01–50 μg/ml for NE (r2=0.9998), 0.1–50 μg/ml for E (r2=0.9995) and DA (r2=0.9999), respectively.