Selective spectrophotometric determination of some primary amines using 2,4-dinitrofluorobenzene reagent

A spectrophotometric method is developed for the quantitative determination of some primary aliphatic and aromatic amines, i.e., allyl amine, 1,5-diaminopentane, 1,6-diaminohexane, cyclohexylamine, m-aminophenol, benzidine and p-phenylenediamine. The method is based on the interaction between these amines and 2,4-dinitrofluorobenzene (DNFB) reagent. The spectra of the products show maximum absorption that ranged from 355–357 nm and 366–377 nm with molar absorptivities that ranged from 1.086 × 104–6.398 × 104 and 7.566 × 103–1.581 × 104 l/mol cm for aliphatic and aromatic primary amines, respectively. Beer’s law is obeyed in the concentration range of 0.25–8.0, 1.0–10, 0.25–2.50, 1.0–8.0, 2.0–20, 1.0–12.0 and 1.0–10.0 μg/ml for the above mentioned amines, respectively, and the mean percent recoveries ranged between 97.8% and 103.3% with precision (RSD) better than 5.5% for all the amines under study. In addition, the stability constant has been determined and the mechanism is proposed for the DNFB-amine products.