A spectrophotometric method for the determination of hydrogen sulfide in sugarcane juice and water

Abstract EN

A sensitive spectrophotometric method is developed for the determination of hydrogen sulphide in water and sugarcane juice.

The method is based on the reaction of hydrogen sulphide with phospomolybdate (ammonium molybdate and phosphate) in sulphuric acid medium.

The system obeys Lambert-Beer ’s law at 715 nm in the concentration range of 0.284–5.68 µg ml-1.

Molar absorptivity, correlation coefficient and Sandell sensitivity values were found to be 5 x 104 l mol-1 cm-1, 0.9995 and 0.0494 µg cm-2 respectively.

The method was employed for the determination of hydrogen sulphide in sugarcane juice and in water samples.

The results obtained were reproducible with acceptable standard deviation 0.1140–0.1337 and relative standard deviation varies from 0.0797–0.6038 %.

For comparison, hydrogen sulphide present in sugarcane juice and water samples were also determined separately following the methylene blue official method.

The results of the proposed method compare well with the official method.