Polarographic determination of phenol

Abstract

The author revealed in the preceding report that chloranil was determined satisfactorily by the polarography in 50% alcohol solution. Since chloranil is readily obtained as a stable end product from various aromatic compounds by the oxidation with potassium chlorate and hydrochloric acid, the applicability of this oxidation to the quantitative analysis has been preliminarily examined in this paper for several aromatic compounds, in which phenol has been found to be oxidized quantitatively to chloranil. The author recommends a method whereby the chloranil derived from phenol by KClO3-HCl oxidation is extracted with ether and is determined by the polarography in 50% alcohol at pH 3.4 using N/10 potassium nitrate as a supporting electrolyte. This offers an easy and accurate method for the determination of phenol. The method was applied to the determination of phenol in naphthalene. © 1962, The Japan Society for Analytical Chemistry. All rights reserved.