Determination of volatile phenols by a flow injection chemiluminescent quench method

Abstract

The ability of phenols to quench the chemiluminescence of p-chlorobenzenediazonium fluoroborate in a medium of alkaline hydrogen peroxide was studied, and a flow injection chemiluminescent quench method for the determination of volatile phenols in polluted water was established. The linear calibration ranges are 0–6.0, 0–5.0, 0–4.5 and 0–8.0 µg ml^–1 and the detection limits are 0.015, 0.020, 0.025 and 0.030 µg ml^–1 for phenol, o-nitrophenol, p-cresol and 2,4-xylenol, respectively. This method is more sensitive than the 4-aminoantipyrine direct spectrophotometric method and the flow injection spectrophotometric method. The relative standard deviation is 3.0% for 1 µg ml^–1 phenol.