An asymmetric flow injection determination of hydroquinone and catechol: An analytic hierarchy and artificial neural network approach

Abstract

A new reaction rate system was introduced for differential kinetic simultaneous determination of hydroquinone (HQ) and Catechol (CC). The method is based on the different kinetic behavior of HQ and CC in their reaction with iron (III) in the presence of 1, 10-phenanthroline (Phen) as a chromogenic reagent. An asymmetric double line flow injection manifold coupled with a spectrophotometric detector was designed and optimized using TOPSIS (Technique of ranking Preferences by Similarity to the Ideal Solution) methods based upon AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process). Under optimal conditions, Bayesian Regularized Artificial Neural Network (BR-ANN) trained by back-propagation of errors was utilized as a non-linear model calibration of flow injection manifold. Detection limits of 0.05 and 0.07 mg L−1 were obtained for HQ and CC, respectively. The linear dynamic range was 0.5–3.0 mg L−1 for both analytes. The suggested method was applied for simultaneous determination of HQ and CC in real samples.