Use of a silver-gelatin complex for the determination of micro-amounts of hydrazine in water

Abstract

Gelatin forms a weak complex with silver(I) in alkaline media. This complex was studied and was found to be suitable for the spectrophotometric determination of 0.65–2.62 µg ml^–1 of hydrazine. The method has been successfully applied to the determination of hydrazine in water using simple, non-toxic and inexpensive chemicals. The molar absorptivity of the complex is 4.2 × 10⁴ l mol^–1 cm^–1 for the spectrophotometric procedure. The proposed method has a relative standard deviation of 0.51%, a confidence limit (95%) for 13.000 µg of hydrazine (20 determinations) in solution of 12.985 ± 0.031 and a Sandell sensitivity of 7.63 × 10^–4µg cm^–2. The determination is free from interferences from a large number of foreign substances.