Determination And Characterization Of Chlorophenols

Abstract

Chlorophenols, which have been classified as priority pollutants by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and are known to have environmental and health effects. They are also suspected to be carcinogenic to humans. Considerable research efforts are constantly being devoted to the development of ways to monitor chlorophenols. In this research Copper(II) complex, [Cu(dipy)₂]2+ was used as a sensor and catalyst for the determination of chlorophenols using Fluorometric and Absorptiometric techniques. A mixture of 30:70 acetonitrile: water was used as solvent for the determination. The chlorophenols used in this research were 4-chlorophenol, 2,5-dichlorophenol, 2,4,5-trichlorophenol and Pentachlorophenol. Characterization of these chlorophenols was also done by correlating the half-wave potential, E_1/2, obtained using Cyclic Voltammetry (CV) with the fluorescence emission energy, E_f, obtained by steady-state fluorescence. Due to the solubility problem, these compounds were dissolved in a 1.0 mM cetyltrimethylammonuim bromide (CTAB) surfactant solution. The surfactant was used as the solvent for the characterization. It was observed from the result that there was a good correlation between the two energies with a correlation coefficient of better than 99.18%.