Document Abstract
A simple sensitive extractive spectrophotometric method for determination
of trichloroethylene is proposed. Trichloroethylene is treated with pyridine to
form glutaconic aldehyde by heterolytic cleavage of the pyridine ring. Glutaconic
aldehyde is further coupled with 4-aminoacetanilide to form an orange–red dye
which is extractable in 3-methyl-1-butanol. The extracted dye shows absorption
maximum at 520 nm. The system obeys Beer’s law in the range of
0.05–0.8 lg mL-1. Important analytical parameters such as time, temperature,
reagent concentration, acidity etc. have been optimized for complete colour reaction.
Sandell’s sensitivity and molar absorptivity for the system were found to be
0.001 lg cm-2 and 1.2 9 105 L mol-1 cm-1, respectively. The proposed method
is satisfactorily applied to micro-level determination of trichloroethylene in various
environmental and biological samples.