An improved phosphorus assay for oils without carcinogenic hydrazine sulfate

An improved spectrophotometric method for phosphorus determination in oils is proposed. The proposed new method has made significant improvements in safety, sensitivity, and efficiency in comparison with the current American Oil Chemists’ Society (AOCS) Official Method (Ca 12–55, corrected 1992). The AOCS method employs hydrazine sulfate as the reducing agent to generate molybdenum blue. Hydrazine sulfate is a known carcinogen in laboratory animals and a suspected human carcinogen. The chemical also irritates skin and mucous membranes. In the improved method ascorbic acid is used as the reducing agent. Ascorbic acid is equally effective as hydrazine sulfate for the color reaction. The improved method is approximately 75 times more sensitive than the AOCS method. The sensitivity is improved by measuring absorbance at the absorption peak, 825 nm, and reducing the final volume of reaction mixture for color reaction. The AOCS method determines phosphorus by measuring absorbance at 650 nm, which is about 40% of that at the absorption peak. The efficiency of this improved method is also significantly increased by reducing sample size and the volumes of sample preparation. Therefore, the improved method is more cost-effective than the AOCS method because less chemical reagents and smaller glassware are used, and the hazardous chemical waste disposal cost is eliminated. The improved method also avoids concentrated HCl and 50% KOH for sample preparation.