ORIENTAL JOURNAL OF CHEMISTRY www.orientjchem.org An International Open Access, Peer Reviewed Research Journal ISSN: 0970-020 X CODEN: OJCHEG 2019, Vol. 35, No.(3): Pg. 1182-1186 This is an Open Access article licensed under a Creative Commons license: Attribution 4.0 International (CC- BY). Published by Oriental Scientific Publishing Company © 2018 Electrochemical Detection of Dissolved Sulphur Dioxide Using Bovine Serum Albumin - Theoretical and Experimental Approach SHRUTHI GIRIDHARAN 1 , JEMINI JOSE 2 and SREEJA. P. B 1 * 1,2 Department of Chemistry, CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Hosur Road, Bangalore 560029, India. *Corresponding author E-mail: sreeja.pb@christuniversity.in http://dx.doi.org/10.13005/ojc/350338 (Received: May 10, 2019; Accepted: June 11, 2019) ABSTRACT In this research work, we discuss the fabrication of an electrochemical sensor that can successfully detect 10 -3 M concentration of sulphur dioxide. Electrochemical analyses were carried out using glassy carbon electrode modified with the protein – bovine serum albumin. The studies were carried out experimentally and theoretically. The theoretical studies were by molecular docking of bovine serum albumin with sulphur dioxide and experimentally, cyclic voltammetry was performed for different scan rates and concentrations of sulphur dioxide. The results obtained prove that bovine serum albumin has appreciable interaction with sulphur dioxide and hence can be used as a basis for the detection of the same. Keywords: Sulphur dioxide, Electrochemical detection, Bovine serum albumin, Fabrication of electrodes. INTRODUCTION Sulphur dioxide is a compound whose natural state of existence is in the gaseous form. This particular compound is a pollutant that poses a major threat to the environment 1 . Sulphur dioxide gas is a common gas in vehicular emissions. It is also generated in-situ in those food products which have food adulterants comprising sulphite salts, as they on oxidation produce sulphur dioxide. Sulphur dioxide being a polar compound exhibits polarity due to the varying electronegativity in the compound. This property of the compound is employed in development of electrochemical sensor that is in-built with a modified electrode saturated with a compound that has high affinity and exhibits molecular interaction with the sulphur dioxide molecule. The compound that was used to modify the electrode was bovine serum albumin. The advent of the work on sulphur dioxide began with the study of the effects that sulphur dioxide had on various aspects of plant life processes such as photosynthesis, respiration, and chlorophyll content 1 . The kinetics of the homogeneous gaseous oxidation of sulphur dioxide was studied by Sadek et al., which was performed in the presence of catalysts 2 . A new surface acoustic wave gas sensor was also constructed to detect the presence of sulphur dioxide and this was based on a polyaniline/ In 2 O 3 nanofibre composite 3 .