2.4. Procedure for the spectrophotometric
determination of nitrite
Transfer a 100 ml portion of water sample containing
0.5–14.0 mg of nitrite into a 250 ml Erlenmeyer
flask. Add 1 ml of the 4-nitroaniline reagent, acidify
with hydrochloric acid to pH 2.0, and allow to
stand for 1 min. Add 2 ml of 1-naphthol solution
and 1 ml of 0.4 M EDTA as a masking agent, then
render the test solution alkaline by adding sodium
hydroxide solution dropwise until pH is 12. Extract
the resulting dye into the PUF parallelepipeds by
shaking them together for 10 min, then measure the
absorbance of foam at 710, 625 and 530 nm against a
blank of the foam in benzene. The net absorbance at
625 nm of the colored species sorbed in the foam is
used to construct a calibration graph for nitrite.