An Alternative Spectrophotometric Determination of Carbaryl Insecticide Residues in Water Samples Using the Cerium-Catalyzed Belousov-Zhabotinsky Oscillating Reaction

An alternative approach for carbaryl determination based on the change in the oscillation period of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) reaction under the addition of carbaryl is demonstrated. The oscillations were observed by spectrophotometric measurement at 320 nm, corresponding to the maximum absorption wavelength of cerium(IV) catalyst. The oscillation periods increase with the carbaryl concentrations, which can be discussed based on the Field-Körös-Noyes (FKN) mechanism. The increase of oscillation periods is proportional to the concentration of carbaryl in the range of 0.1-200 mg L-1 with the regression coefficient of 0.9938. The limits of detection and quantification were 0.044 and 0.147 mg L-1, respectively. The precisions in terms of intra-day and inter-day measurements were efficient with relative standard deviation (RSD) lower than 2.1%. Accuracy of carbaryl in different water samples was obtained with high recoveries in the range of 94-106% and also comparable to the results of high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis. The proposed method is precise, cost-effective and can be alternatively employed for the screening and determination of carbaryl residues in water samples.