Sensitive Spectrophotometric Determination of Benzoylperoxide with N,N,N′,N′-Tetramethyl-p-phenylenediamine

Abstract

A highly sensitive spectrophotometric determination of benzoylperoxide (BPO) based on the color developing reaction between N,N,N′,N′-tetramethyl-p-phenylenediamine (TMPD) and BPO in the presence of cerium(IV) in weakly acidic media is proposed. The calibration graph is linear in the range 0–6000 ng BPO per 10 ml with an apparent molar absorptivity of 4.73 × 10⁵ 1 mol^?1 cm-1 at 612 nm. The proposed method is about 50-fold more sensitive than N-ethyl-2-naphthylamine (NENA), and application to assays of flour is described.