A new spectrophotometric method for the determination of hydrazine in environmental samples

Summary Hydrazine is determined spectrophotometrically by using veratraldehyde (3,4-dimethoxybenzaldehyde) as a new reagent. The reaction is based on the condensation of veratraldehyde with hydrazine in acidic medium. The resulting yellow coloured condensation product has maximum absorption at 410 nm. The colour system obeys Beer's law in the range of 0.065 to 0.3 g/ml of hydrazine. Molar absorptivity and Sandell's sensitivity are found to be 6.72×10⁴ l mol^–1 cm^–1 (±100) and 0.0004 g cm^–2, respectively. The method is successfully applied for the determination of hydrazine in polluted water, biological samples, in isoniazide tablets and in air. It is compared with other reported spectrophotometric methods and is found to be of comparable sensitivity.