Determination of formaldehyde by its catalytic effect on the oxidation of pyrogallol red by bromate using flow-injection spectrophotometric detection

This paper reports a simple and sensitive flow-injection method for the spectrophotometric determination of formaldehyde based on the catalytic effect of formaldehyde on the oxidation of pyrogallol red with bromate in acidic media. The decrease in absorbance of the reaction mixture was measured at 470 nm. The calibration graph was linear in the range of 0.47 to 40.0 μ/mL formaldehyde for a sample rate of 30±5 samples per hour. The limit of detection is 0.36 μ/mL. The relative standard deviations for ten replicate measurements of 2.5, 5.0, and 20.0 μ/mL formaldehyde were 3.9, 2.1, and 0.7%, respectively. The method was applied to the determination of formaldehyde in river water, shampoo, and melamine-formaldehyde resin.