A facile and fast electrochemical method for the simultaneous determination of o-dihydroxybenzene and p-dihydroxybenzene using a surfactant

A fast and convenient analytical technique has been suggested to detect dihydroxybenzene (DHB) isomers directly and simultaneously. In 0.1 M HAc-NaAc buffer solution (pH 5.6), the reduction peaks of p -DHB and o -DHB were partly separated by differential pulse voltammetry at the glassy carbon electrode. By adding a surfactant (cetyl pyridinium chloride) to enhance the detection sensitivity and using a semi-derivative technique to improve the separation, p -DHB and o -DHB were detected simultaneously. The linear calibration ranges were 1.2 × 10 −6 to 1.0 × 10 −4 M for p -DHB and 8.2 × 10 −7 to 1.0 × 10 −4 M for o -DHB, with detection limits of 3.6 × 10 −7 and 2.4 × 10 −7 M, respectively. The proposed method has been applied to the direct determination of DHB isomers in water sample, and the results were excellent.