Study of methanol catalyzed reaction between sodium 1,2-naphthoquine-4-sulfonate and hydroxyl ion and its application in the determination of methanol

A novel and simple spectrophotometric method for the direct determination of methanol with 1,2-naphthoquinone-4-sulfonate (NQS) is developed in this paper. It is based on the fact that methanol can catalyze the reaction between 1,2-naphthoquinone-4-sulfonate and hydroxyl ion to form 2-hydroxy-1,4-naphthoquinone in buffer solution of pH 13.00. Beer's law is obeyed in a range of 0.26–15.8 mg/ml at the maximal absorption wavelength of 454 nm. The equation of linear regression is A = 0.01998 + 0.05944C (mg/ml), with a linear regression correlation coefficient of 0.9977. The detection limit is 0.25 mg/ml (3σ/k), while R.S.D. is 2.0% and the recovery rate is in a range of 96.5–103%. The detailed mechanism for the formation of the products is proposed and discussed.