Tobacco Science & Technology, 2008, 2, p. 28-32, ISSN.1002-0861
Improvement of continuous flow analysis for determining chlorine in tobacco
South China University of Technology, School of Chemistry Science, Guangzhou, China
The content of chlorine in tobacco determined by continuous flow analysis (CFA), the standard method described in YC/T 162-2002 and GB 13580.9-1992, is considerably different from that by other classical methods, such as Moore method, potentiometric titration and ion chromatography. Therefore, the various factors affecting CFA were investigated, optimized and improved: 1) a dialyzer was set in the analyzer; 2) the detecting wavelength was shifted from 480 nm to 490 nm; 3) the flow-through cell with 15 mm optical path was replaced by a 10 mm flow-through cell without bubble elimination; 4) the determined optimum coloring reaction time was about 665 seconds; 5) the flow scheme of instrument was redesigned. The results showed that: the disturbance from the background color of tobacco extract was eliminated; the detection period reduced from 160 seconds to 90 seconds; the content of chlorine in tobacco determined by the improved method was highly in accordance with that by the classical methods mentioned above, with RSD < 5% and t = 1.6278 < t1-a = 0.10/2 (n-1) = 1.7341. The improved method is fit for fast analysis of chlorine in tobacco.