REACTIONS OF SULFACETAMIDE WITH PULSE RADIOLYTICALLY GENERATED REDUCING RADICALS

Pulse radiolysis technique has been used to characterise the transient s formed by the reaction of sulphacetamide with e(aq)(-) and subsequen tly study the electron transfer reactions from the transient to variou s election accepters such as thionine, safranine-T and methyl viologen . The results indicate that the semi-reduced sulphacetamide species ar e highly reducing in nature as they transfer electrons to various dyes with near diffusion controlled rates (k > 10(9)dm(3)mol(-1)s(-1)) in alkaline and acidic solutions. The influence of oxygen on the decay be haviour of semi-reduced species has been investigated and the results show that O-2, reaction with SA(-) is very fast (k = 1.5 x 10(9)dm(3)m ol(-1)s(-1)) and leads to the formation of a permanent-coloured produc t. Reactions of H atoms resulted in the formation of two transient spe cies whose spectral, kinetic and acid-base characteristics have also b een investigated.