Spectrophotometric determination of minute amounts of alkylbenzene sulfonate

Abstract

This work was attempted to find a rapid, simple and accurate method for the determination of alkylbenzene sulfonate(ABS) in water.
The complex formed between methylene blue and ABS is well extracted into organic solvents such as 1, 2dichloroethane, 1, 1', 2-trichloroethane and chloroform. ABS is determined by measuring the absorbancy of the organic layer at the absorption maximum wavelength. Single extraction with 10 ml of the solvent was found most practical. Although the method using extraction with dichloroethane or trichloroethane was more sensitive than the chloroform method, chloroform was chosen for the present work, because many anions which cause interference were easily removed by one washing of the extract with an acid solution of methylene blue.
The proposed method is suitable for the determination of ABS over the range from 0.1 to 4 ppm, by employing a 10 ml portion of sample water.