Determination of fenitrothion in river water and commercial formulations by adsorptive stripping voltammetry with a carbon ceramic electrode

Abstract

A sol-gel carbon ceramic electrode (CCE) without any assigned electron transfer mediator or specific reagents was used for the determination of fenitrothion by square-wave adsorptive stripping voltammetry. Fenitrothion strongly adsorbs on a CCE surface, which enables the development of facile electrochemical quantitative methods. Operational parameters such as pH value, initial potential value, and pulse frequency were optimized, and the stripping voltammetric performance was studied by using square-wave voltammetry. Square-wave adsorptive stripping voltammetry was used to obtain calibration curves with 2 linear ranges, 0.005-0.1 and 0.1-50 μM; the lower linear range was used to calculate the detection limit, 0.0016 μM (5 min adsorption). The effect of interference species on the determination of fenitrothion was also studied. The inherent stability, high sensitivity, low detection limit, and low cost of analysis are the advantages of this sensor. The present method was successfully applied to the determination of fenitrothion in a commercial formulation and river water samples. Analysis of real water samples by using the sensor demonstrated the feasibility of applying the sensor to the on-site monitoring of organophosphate compounds.