Spectrophotometric determination of aliphatic primary and secondary amines by reaction with p-benzoquinone

A simple, sensitive and selective spectrophotometric method has been developed for determination of aliphatic primary and secondary amines. It is based on a reaction with excess of p-benzoquinone in ethanol whereby 1:1 (amine:quinone) coloured products are obtained, which have maximum absorption at 510 nm and E(1cm)(1%) in the range 400-650. The effect of solvent, temperature, concentration of quinone and the presence of water have been kinetically investigated by the initial rate method. The conditions for monitoring amine concentrations as low as 0.1 microg/ml are optimized in the light of the kinetic data. Results with an average recovery of 98.5% and mean standard deviation of 1.9% are obtained with 9 different amines without interference from tertiary amines, ammonia, amides, imides, anilides, hydrazines and alpha-amino-acids.