Abstract: A flow injection spectrophotometric method for the determination of carbofuran in commercial pesticide formulations was developed. The determination involves on-line hydrolysis of the extracted carbofuran at room temperature with sodium hydroxide. The resulting carbofuran-phenol is coupled with diazotized 4-aminobenzoic acid in order to achieve an appropriate selectivity and sensitivity for the spectrophotometric measurements. The calibration curve is linear over the range 110 mg L-1 of carbofuran. The proposed method has a detection limit of 0.15 mg L-1 of carbofuran and a sample frequency of 120 injections per hour. The relative standard deviation of six independent determinations of a sample containing 1 mg L-1 carbofuran was 0.6%. The suitability of the proposed procedure for the determination of carbofuran in commercial pesticide formulations was studied. The procedure provides results comparable to those obtained by liquid chromatographic analysis.

Abstract: A simple and rapid procedure was developed for the flow injection (FI) spectrophotometric determination of carbofuran in pesticides formulations. The determination was based on the alkaline hydrolysis, at room temperature, of the carbofuran to yield carbofuran-phenol which can be coupled with diazotized sulfanilic acid in order to achieve an appropriate selectivity and sensitivity. The calibration graph is linear over the range 0.5-60 mg / L of carbofuran. The method has provided a detection Limit of 0.5 mg / L, and the precision was better than 0.6% (RS.D.) at a throughput of 80 samples per hour.