DETERMINATION OF VITAMIN C IN a REDOXON TABLET

This application exploits the absorbing tendencies of certain compounds towards light in
order to determine their concentration in solution. Certain species absorbs light at a
specified wavelength from which the concentration of the absorbing species can be found
out. According to the Beer-Lambert law (A=Ecl); where A is the absorbance, E refers to
the extinction coefficient, c the concentration and l the path length, the unknown
concentration of an absorbing species can be found by plotting a graph of absorbance vs.
concentration. A simple rearrangement of the formula gives the concentration. This is
applied in the case of wanting to find out the concentration of vitamin c in a Redoxon
tablet.

METHODOLOGY

REAGENTS TO BE USED
Prepare a 2000ugmL-1 solution of ascorbic acid by dissolving 2.0g of ascorbic acid in a
1000ml volumetric flask and making it up to the mark. Also prepare a 200ugmL-1 of a
CuSO4 solution by dissolving 0.2g of CuSO4 in 0.02 moldm-3 H2SO4. Prepare also a
60ugmL-1 of copper solution, 0.2% w/v 2, 9-dimethyl-1, 10-phenanthroline (neucoproine)
solution prepared in 90% v/v ethyl alcohol, a pH of 7.5 buffer solutions to maintain the
pH, 0.4% w/v N-phenylbenzimidoylthiourea (PBITU) in chloroform for the extraction of
copper.2

PROCEDURE

Weigh out 1.0 g of Redoxon tablet on an analytical balance in a 5ml beaker. Transfer the
tablet to a 50ml beaker and dissolve it in about 40cm3 of water. Stir the solution with a
glass rod until the entire tablet has dissolved; this will be indicated by a colourless
solution. After this, filter through a Whatmann filter paper. A 1mL sample should then be
added and analyzed by following the steps hereafter. An aliquot of standard solution
containing 1.0-5.0ugmL-1 of ascorbic acid is poured into a 125ml separatory funnel. To
this solution, 3mL of copper solution, 3ML buffer solution and 2mL neucoproine solution
is added. Following this is the dilution of the aqueous phase to 20mL with distilled
water.2 This will result in the formation of a complex which is then extracted with 20mL
chloroform solution of PBITU for 3mins. The aqueous phase should then be run-off and
the colour of the extract measured at a maximum wavelength of 480nm using a blank
solution as the reference, after it has been dried over anhydrous sodium sulphate (~3gm).
The concentration of the ascorbic acid can then be determined by using the standard
calibration curve method.2

MANUFACTURER
A suitable manufacturer for this instrument is Systronics. The instrument is the uv-vis
spectrophotometer model 108. It has a bandwidth of 0.9nm and is PMT based.1

REFERENCE
1) http://www.systronicsindia.com/templates/systronics/images/pro/UV
%20Visible%20Spectrophotometer/1.pdf

2) Journal of the Chinese Chemical Society, 2005, 52, 503-506