A simple and sensitive spectrophotometric method for the determination of trace amounts of hydroquinone in environmental water samples

A novel spectrophotometric method for the determination of hydroquinone was developed.The method was based on the reaction of hydroquinone with Cu(Ⅱ) at pH 5.0 and the reaction product Cu(I) could react with SCN-to form precipitate CuSCN.The amount of hydroquinone can be determined by measuring the amount of residual Cu(Ⅱ).The Beer's law is obeyed over the concentration range of 0.10-4.0 μg/mL for hydroquinone with the detection limits of 0.033 μg/mL,while the apparent molar absorptivity is 1.2×105 L·mol-1·cm-1.Catechol and resorcinol didn't interfere with the determination of hydroquinone at a given concentration level.The simple,highly selective and sensitive method has been successfully applied to the determination of hydroquinone in river,lake,tap water samples with satisfactory results.