Abstract:
Hydroquinone (HQ) is the oxidation product of some aromatic compounds. HQ is widely
found in cigarette smoke, diesel engine lubricant and the chemical industry. Industrial
development has caused a huge increase in the release of potentially toxic compounds into the
atmosphere, water bodies and soils. Therefore, a simple, cheap and sensitive determination
method of HQ is highly desired. In this work, the electrochemical determination of HQ was
reported. The oxidation current response of HQ at the poly malachite green modified carbon
paste electrode (PMG-CPE) was investigated using cyclic voltammetry (CV) and linear sweep
voltammetry (LSV) methods. The performance between unmodified carbon paste electrode
(UCPE) and PMG-CPE was made toward the determination of HQ. Due to the different
interactions of the HQ at the electrode surface, the PMG-CPE electrode signal intensity of the
developed method gives much higher than UCPE in phosphate buffer solution (PBS). Under
the optimized experimental conditions, the electrode oxidation peak current was a direct
relationship with the concentration of HQ in the range of 1 μM to 75 μM and a limit of
detection (LOD) of 0.82 μM (3σ/m). The reported PMG-CPE was further applied for the
determination of HQ in waste water with acceptable recoveries.
