Flow-Injection Catalytic Spectrophotometric Determination of Trace Amounts of Nitrite

ABSTRACT

A flow-injection catalytic spectrophotometric method is proposed for the determination of nitrite based on its catalytic effect on potassium bromate oxidation of acridine orange in phosphoric acid medium. The reaction is monitored spectrophotometrically by measuring the decrease in absorbance of acridine orange at 491.5 nm coupling with the stopped-flow technique. The calibration curve was linear between 3.4 and 65 ng/mL, and the detection limit was 2.2 ng/mL. Up to 30 samples can be analyzed per hour with a relative precision of ca. 1.9%. The proposed method was successfully applied to the determination of nitrite in waters and food samples with satisfactory results.

Keywords::

• Flow-injection analysis
• nitrite
• acridine orange
• catalytic method
• spectrophotometry