A simple and selective spectrophotometric flow injection method for the determination of ultra trace amounts of phenylhydrazine by its inhibition effect on the reaction of victoria blue B and bromate in micellar medium

In this work, a simple, selective and rapid flow injection method has been developed for the determination of phenylhydrazine. The method is based on its inhibition effect on the reaction of victoria blue B and bromate in acidic micellar medium. The reaction was monitored spectrophotometrically by measuring victoria blue B absorbance at λ_max = 632 nm. The reagents and manifold variables, which have influences on the sensitivity, were investigated and the optimum conditions were established. The optimized conditions made it possible to determine phenylhydrazine in the ranges of 7–370 nM with a detection limit of 5 nM and a sample rate of 25 ± 5 samples/h. The proposed method has been successfully applied to the determination of phenylhydrazine in human serum and water samples.