DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF QUANTITATIVE DETERMINATION HPLC METHODS OF THE FLUOROQUINOLONE ANTIBIOTICS - MOXIFLOXACIN HYDROCHLORIDE AND NORFLOXACIN IN SUPPORT OF ADSORPTION STUDY ON NATURAL ZEOLITES

Abstract

The fluoroquinolone antibiotics have been widely used in human and animal medicine. Residual antibiotics pollution has become one of the most serious environmental and human health problems today. Therefore, it has been a great exigency to develop some efficient and cost-effective treatment methods and technologies for antibiotics removal from industrial and household contaminated water. There is the most used technique - adsorption for the treatment of wastewaters. Due to high cation-exchange ability as well as to the molecular sieve properties, natural zeolites can be used as adsorbents for removal of the above-mentioned antibiotics from wastewaters and in the purification process. The present research concerns the development and validation of new, selective, sensitive and rapid HPLC methods for the quantitative determination of the most frequently used fluoroquinolone antibiotics – moxifloxacin hydrochloride and norfloxacin in aqueous solutions to measure their adsorption on the natural zeolites and for routine analysis of wastewaters. The proposed HPLC methods were validated with respect to robustness (standard solution stability study, membrane filter compatibility test, critical factors effect study using design of experiments - DoE), system suitability test, specificity, linearity-range (over the concentration range of 0.05 to 2000 μg/mL for both antibiotics), precision, accuracy, limits of detection (LOD) and quantitation (LOQ). The LOD and LOQ were 0.01 and 0.05 μg/mL for moxifloxacin hydrochloride and 0.008 and 0.05 μg/mL for norfloxacin, respectively. Adsorption experiment by natural zeolites in static and dynamic conditions was used for sample preparation of both test fluoroquinolone antibiotics.